Moral Maze - 18/02/2009

Michael Buerk celebrates the 500th edition of the programme with a debate held at the Royal Society of Medicine in London. Melanie Philips, Michael Portillo, Claire Fox and Clifford Longley cross-examine witnesses Tom Butler, Bishop of Southwark, Professor Alistair McGrath, Head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture at King's College and author of The Dawkins Delusion, Peter Cave, chair of the British Humanist Philosophers group and author of Humanism: a Beginner's Guide, and Liberal Democrat MP Dr Evan Harris. Michael and the panel consider the question. if you do not believe in a set of divinely inspired moral rules, how do you decide right from wrong in a world with complex and competing interests? We live in an age where there is no longer general agreement on religion and the time when our society was united by a common set of values based on a belief in God is long gone. Is it hopelessly optimistic to believe that Man can create an ethical framework based on a belief in individual responsibility and mutual respect, or are those secular values a much a better guide than any sectarian dogma or religious text? Can a post-religious society be a moral society, and if so, whose morals will we live by?