Welcome to the program and the third and final instalment of our three-part series on faith and reason. This week: Judaism.

We often hear it said that Judaism is about deed rather than creed and that ethical questions of how to live a good life are far more urgent than theological questions about whether God exists, or why he allows the innocent to suffer.

And yet, Judaism also has a long and distinguished history of philosophical thought, and the meaning of suffering has been a constant theme in Jewish literature, going all the way back to the Book of Job. Today were exploring that darkness, taking a tour of the Jewish Enlightenment, and looking at contemporary issues around education and that well-worn stereotype of the Jewish intellectual.

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If you wanted to draw up a checklist of what religious people have to believe in order to describe themselves as such, youd probably put The Existence of God at very top. Whether or not you can prove that God exists, is a favourite gauntlet for atheists to throw down, and Christians and Muslims are often more than happy to pick it up, in the spirit of defending an indispensable pillar of faith.

In Judaism, however, the question of the existence of God is all hedged about with ambiguity (and its just the first of several ambiguities well be encountering in this program). Robert Eisen is Professor of Religion and Judaic Studies at George Washington University in Washington DC.

Robert Eisen: It certainly is fundamental; its fundamental throughout the centuries, certainly up to the modern period and even after. You know, even once the modern period begins, God is at the centre of Judaism, because everything is based on this notion of God creating the world and there being a covenantal relationship between God and the Jewish people. God is certainly central, but I think its fair to say the Jews were a lot less obsessed with proving the existence of God, because they were a lot less obsessed than Christians with belief in general.

Jews in the Middle Ages tended to systematise action; they were interested in systematising law, not systematising belief. Also, when they finally got around to talking about God, there was a tendency to often, well, because Jews had suffered so much, of seeing God as kind of a hidden presence. Not necessarily absent but hidden, and so they were much less concerned about God than they were about asking, well, what, you know, what is it that we need to do in life? What are our religious obligations based on the 613 commandments? Now, in the modern period you have Jews beginning to question whether God is even hiding. Is he active in the world at all? Was he ever active?

And so you get from Spinoza onward the view that God is an impersonal being, kind of like a motor running the world. But even there, Jews are talking about God, so I would say God is fundamental in Judaism, less than he is, perhaps in Christianity, and Jews also entertain more radical views about God than I think Christians generally have.

David Rutledge: Well, its interesting, isnt it, how far you can push that idea of a hidden god or an absent god, even. It seems you can still entertain that idea and identify as a Jew, whereas from a Christian perspective if youre starting to doubt whether God exists or whether God is there, to some extent, its difficult to call yourself a Christian.

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Darkness and Enlightenment: Faith, Reason and Judaism

OWN'S "SUPER SOUL SUNDAY" WINS ITS SECOND DAYTIME EMMY AWARD

Los Angeles - OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network's popular Sunday morning series "Super Soul Sunday," from Harpo Studios, won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Class Series at Friday night's (June 20) 41st Annual Daytime Entertainment Creative Arts Emmy Awards ceremony. This is the second win and third nomination for the series in the three years that it has been on the air.

"'Super Soul Sunday' has become appointment viewing on Sunday mornings for our viewers," said Sheri Salata, president, OWN and Harpo Studios. "Oprah is passionate about providing network programming that not only entertains but also feeds the soul, and we are thrilled that the academy and its members have recognized this series with another Emmy win."

All-new episodes of "Super Soul Sunday" will return in September 2014.

About "Super Soul Sunday" (Sundays at 11 a.m. ET/PT)

"Super Soul Sunday" is the multi-award winning daytime series that delivers a timely thought-provoking, eye-opening and inspiring block of programming designed to help viewers awaken to their best selves and discover a deeper connection to the world around them. Recognized by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with two Daytime Emmy(R) awards, the Alliance of Women in Media Foundation with a Gracie award and the Religion Communicators Council with a Wilbur award, "Super Soul Sunday" features all-new conversations between Oprah Winfrey and top thinkers, authors, visionaries and spiritual leaders. Exploring themes and issues including happiness, personal fulfillment, spirituality and conscious living, guests who have appeared include Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, Dr. Maya Angelou, Gary Zukav, Marianne Williamson, Ram Dass, Eckhart Tolle, indie.arie, Coach Phil Jackson, don Miguel Ruiz, and Thich Nhat Hanh. Home to Oprah's Book Club 2.0, the series has helped surge book sales of bestselling author Cheryl Strayed, debut novelist Ayana Mathis and bestselling author Sue Monk Kidd. A truly unique television experience, this groundbreaking series has attracted one of the most loyal, active and engaged social communities in television. Every episode has ranked in the top ten most social shows in broadcast television and cable, frequently spiking to number one (source: Bluefin Data). "Super Soul Sunday" presents an array of perspectives on what it means to be alive in today's world. This series is produced by Harpo Studios with Jill Barancik serving as executive producer and Corny Koehl, Amy Ward and Lisa Weiss as co-executive producers.

About OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network

OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network is the first and only network named for, and inspired by, a single iconic leader. Oprah Winfrey's heart and creative instincts inform the brand - and the magnetism of the channel. Winfrey provides leadership in programming and attracts superstar talent to join her in primetime, building a global community of like-minded viewers and leading that community to connect on social media and beyond. OWN is a singular destination on cable. Depth with edge. Heart. Star power. Connection. And endless possibilities. OWN is a joint venture between Harpo, Inc. and Discovery Communications. The network debuted on January 1, 2011 and is available in 85 million homes. The venture also includes the award-winning digital platform Oprah.com. For more information, please visitwww.oprah.com/own.

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OWN's "Super Soul Sunday" Wins Its Second Daytime Emmy Award

A peoples sense of national pride is measurable in general, as well as specific, aspects. In the Philippines, the most general survey question used by Social Weather Stations is Gaano ninyo ipinagmamalaki ang pagiging Pilipinotalagang ipinagmamalaki, medyo ipinagmamalaki, medyo hindi ipinagmamalaki, o talagang hindi ipinagmamalaki? (How proud are you to be a Filipinovery proud, somewhat proud, somewhat not proud, or not at all proud?) It has a symmetric four-point scale, with the upper two points for the proud, and the lower two points for the not-proud.

There is a great deal of general national pride. The latest SWS survey of adults on national pride was in December 2013. It found 84 percent very proud, versus 12 percent somewhat proud, 2 percent somewhat not proud, and 2 percent not at all proud, to be Filipinos. Thus 84 + 12 = 96 percent are generally proud to be Filipinos. In April 1993, when SWS first ran this item, only a bare majority of 53 percent felt very proud; adding 36 percent somewhat proud, a total 89 percent were generally proud.

The next time around, in April 1996, the very proud were 76 percent, and the total generally proud were 95 percent. In 28 more surveys from 2000 to 2013, the very proud percentage ranged between 68 (November 2001 and March 2002) and 87 (July 2001, June 2010, and December 2011), and the total generally proud percentage ranged between 87 and 97.

The numbers on specific aspects of national pride are healthy. Last week, I reported 46 percent of Filipinos as very proud, and 39 percent as somewhat proud, or total 85 percent proud, of our history in particular. These numbers are from the SWS survey for the 2003 round of the International Social Survey Program (www.issp.org). They may be compared to the average of 36 percent very proud and 44 percent somewhat proud, or total 80 percent proud, of their history among the ISSP peoples.

History is one of 10 aspects of national pride included in the ISSP module on national identity. (The list is not meant to be comprehensive; for instance, it excludes pride in spirituality and in family love. It was drafted by a committee that included the Philippines, and approved by the ISSP plenary vote.) The table below shows that, among the 10 aspects, our history and our achievements in sports have consistently been the top two sources of Filipino national pride, based on SWS surveys of 1995, 2003 and 2014.

Aspects of National Pride 1995 2003 2014

Percent Very + Somewhat Proud

Achievements in sports 81 85 (81) 87

History 84 85 (80) 86

Achievements in arts

Continued here:
Ten aspects of national pride

As the host of the recently concluded series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey now available on home video, if you missed it Neil deGrasse Tyson became, along with Americas most prominent astrophysicist, the public face of science in its effort to recapture the public imagination. But although Tyson is an important author in his own right, he didnt conceive, write or produce Cosmos. He essentially served the role of an actor or a news anchor, a charismatic and credible figure reading someone elses words off a Teleprompter. Those words, and damn near everything else about the show, were the work of Ann Druyan, the writer and executive producer who also co-created the original Cosmos series with her late husband, Carl Sagan, more than 30 years ago.

Druyan does not personally seek the limelight and is not a celebrity, but in her own way shes a key cultural figure in the struggle against the popular antagonism to science and the spread of anti-scientific claptrap about climate change and evolution. Those on the creationist or anti-evolutionist fringe who understood the unstinting scientific arguments of Cosmos as a direct attack on their beliefs were entirely correct, but Druyans critique of religion goes well beyond the literal-minded idiocy of the Answers in Genesis crowd. She describes herself as an agnostic rather than an atheist based on the premise that science must withhold judgment on questions it cannot answer but she has also described religious faith as antithetical to the values of science and religion in general as a statement of contempt for nature and reality.

Druyan is well aware that many religious people would reject those characterizations, and those snippets may make her philosophical approach sound less generous and open-minded than it really is. While she is profoundly uncomfortable with the artificial wall between the domains of science and religion erected by Stephen Jay Goulds famous pronouncement that they are non-overlapping magisteria, she welcomes discussion of seemingly indefinable and unscientific concepts like sacredness and spirituality. Those things are to be found at a capacious and more evolved level, she argues, by leaving behind our infantile sense of centrality in the universe, in which we are the precious offspring of a benevolent protector, and instead shifting our focus to the profound and immense mysteries presented by 13 billion years of cosmic evolution and four and a half billion years of the story of life on this planet.

During my all-too-brief phone conversation with Druyan, we also discussed her brilliant rereading of the story of the Garden of Eden, which she sees as the story of humanitys escape from a maximum-security prison with 24-hour surveillance. Adam and Eves capital offense is that they seek knowledge and ask questions, precisely the qualities that define the human species. At least in that story, God appears to demand a subservient and doctrinaire incuriosity, and many of his followers continue to insist on that path to this day. There are certainly currents within the major religious traditions that resist such a simple-minded negation of science Buddhism, Judaism and the Catholic Church are now OK, generally speaking, with both evolution and cosmology but Druyans provocative critique of religion as a distorting social force is well worth considering even if you think her argument is too sweeping.

One mistake Druyan never makes, either in Cosmos or anywhere else, is the arrogant historicism sometimes displayed by Richard Dawkins and other prominent scientific atheists. By that I mean the quasi-religious assumption that we stand at a uniquely privileged position of near-perfect scientific knowledge, with just a few blanks to fill in before we understand everything about the universe. Im sure most of what we all hold dearest and cherish most, believing at this very moment, Druyan has said, will be revealed at some future time to be merely a product of our age and our history and our understanding of reality. Science as a process, as the never-ending search for truth, is sacred. But what we now know, or think we know, is always a matter for humility and doubt.

Ann, I know Im not the first person to bring this up, but youve done two versions of this show where, you know, a prominent male scientist was on-screen and you were behind the scenes. The first time around, of course, it was your husband, and this time its Neil Tyson. Because hes standing in front of the cameras, everybody thinks of him as the creator of the show. Whats going on with that?

That is a funny thing, isnt that? I am a little bit surprised when critics, who I think are more likely to read the credits with some degree of attention, talk about the show as if Neil has had something to do with its inception or its writing. In the case of Carl it was different. Obviously Carl was the senior partner in conceiving the show with me and [astronomer] Steven Soter. And so, I mean, I am kind of taken aback. But then I look at the brilliance of Neils performance, and how unexpectedly he has taken what I wrote and given it its best possible expression on the show. So I love the guy. I guess thats the plight of the writer. It is coming out of someone elses mouth; people think it must be theirs. Its a natural reaction.

Its funny, though. I mean, Im a movie critic, and I dont think people are confused when they go to see a movie and Johnny Depp is up there playing a character. They pretty much get the concept that somebody wrote those lines for him. But they dont seem to understand that in this case.

They dont, and thats because, you know, Neil is a scientist and a writer also. So its not that great a leap to think that this is his material. And of course, it was true for Carl too, in a much greater degree. So it all makes sense. Im happy. I mean, look, I cant get the fact that this show has played in something like 181 countries, and in the vast majority of them its been an off-the-scale success. For someone who started out on this road seven years ago, this is the best possible outcome I could have imagined.

How have you felt about the degree of pushback from religious folks? Youve been very clear about embracing the scientific consensus that climate change is the result of human activity, that evolution by natural selection is a fact, and that the age of the universe is not in dispute. Im sure you were expecting some resistance to all that.

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Why is God telling me to stop asking questions?: Meet the woman behind Neil deGrasse Tysons Cosmos