{"id":7055,"date":"2016-03-31T12:44:50","date_gmt":"2016-03-31T16:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/?p=7055"},"modified":"2017-01-02T09:32:12","modified_gmt":"2017-01-02T14:32:12","slug":"producer-james-younger-finds-meaning-in-the-story-of-god-this-sunday-on-natgeo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/2016\/03\/producer-james-younger-finds-meaning-in-the-story-of-god-this-sunday-on-natgeo.html","title":{"rendered":"Producer James Younger finds meaning in &#8220;The Story of God&#8221; (this Sunday on NatGeo)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s today\u2019s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"EXCLUSIVE: Morgan Freeman Travels to Uncover the Mysteries of Creation in &#039;Story of God&#039; Trailer\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/l9PEMc_nXuQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>The six-part event series <em>The Story of God<\/em> <em>with Morgan Freeman<\/em> premieres Sunday, April 3 @ 9:00 PM ET on National Geographic Channel.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"yui_3_16_0_ym18_1_1459430798064_19812\">\n<p><span id=\"yui_3_16_0_ym18_1_1459430798064_19815\"><span id=\"yui_3_16_0_ym18_1_1459430798064_21004\">NatGeo&#8217;s ambitious series will look at such perpetual questions\u00a0as Who is God? Where did we come from? Why does evil happen? What happens when we die? The show, produced by\u00a0Freeman, Lori McCreary and James Younger,\u00a0<\/span><\/span><span id=\"yui_3_16_0_ym18_1_1459430798064_21000\"><span id=\"yui_3_16_0_ym18_1_1459430798064_20999\">seeks to provide understanding and context regarding how religion has evolved throughout the course of civilization and, in turn, how religion has shaped the evolution of society.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I asked producer James Younger about\u00a0the mission of the series.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"pc pg-1pc1 pg-1w0 pg-1h0\">\n<p><strong>JWK: What do you hope people take away from viewing <em>The Story of God<\/em>?<\/strong><strong>JAMES YOUNGER:<\/strong> I hope people take away that the various beliefs that exist around the world are less different than they appear. And I hope that people who have their own faith will learn something new about other faiths \u2013 most people know so little about them. Do you know more than two things about Islam or Buddhism? Most people don\u2019t. In learning more about other religions, we hope that people will find that they are less different from their personal beliefs than they think.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK:<\/strong> <strong>What questions do you tackle in the series?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JY:<\/strong> The series has 6 episodes that will discuss life beyond death, the apocalypse, creation, evil \u2013 the big mystery of why does evil exist, miracles \u2013 the idea that someone is watching over us and does God intervene in the world and control our lives, who is god \u2013 this addresses the question if there is one god, many gods, gods that are invisible, gods that have a human face \u2013 how are all these gods connected.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK: What did you personally learn from making <em>The Story of God<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JY:<\/strong> I gained a greater understanding of why people need faith in their lives. I think that I have always been a very spiritual person but I didn\u2019t really gravitate towards ritual \u2013 I didn\u2019t go to church; I didn\u2019t perform or participate in ritual ceremonies. My personal feeling was that faith is a completely internal, spiritual, meditative practice and watching all of these amazing religious ceremonies and festivals around the world \u2013 going to the Aarti in India, experiencing Buddhist chants, going to Joel Osteen\u2019s mega church in Texas, seeing all those people worshiping together \u2013 I realized that there is power that comes out of these group religious moments. And I felt it myself both in India and in Texas and I realized how good that is for people.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK:<\/strong> <strong>What faith ideas tend to be common across religious lines?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JY:<\/strong> Almost every faith has this idea that God is this energy that infuses the world. Even if you\u2019re Hindu and there are many gods that you may see statues of, or if you\u2019re a Buddhist where there is no actual physical god, and obviously for Christians, Jews, and Muslims, there is one God \u2013 god is this omnipresent force that we can tap into.<\/p>\n<p>Most religions have an idea of the after life in some form. And almost all religions deal with the idea of good and evil.<\/p>\n<p>The one thing that\u2019s very different is this idea of the apocalypse. The apocalypse is very specific to Abrahamic religions, and there are ideas of endings in Buddhism and Hinduism \u2013 but they don\u2019t have an idea of judgment day.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK:<\/strong> <strong>How has the perception of God changed over the centuries?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><b>JY:<\/b> I think about the earliest idea of God \u2013 it might be a mountain or an ancestry or a force of nature. Religious scholars say that the God of the Hebrews, Yahweh, was the god of the wind. A long time ago, there were many gods and most cultures, I think, had many gods \u2013 because they looked at the various forces they encountered in their world \u2013 the sun, water, plants growing, the animals. I think at some point in history this idea of one God emerged and it emerged suddenly with Moses, but also it probably happened in places like Stonehenge \u2013 people started to focus on one force which was the sun. Pharaoh Akhenaten in Egypt around the time of Moses declared that there was one god and it was the sun. So there was a historical shift from many gods to just one-ism<\/p>\n<p>Christianity added this other aspect of God, Jesus, as a person \u2013 God becoming more powerful and in the same ways more distant, perhaps could be thought of as being harder to connect to. But Christianity has this unique approach to God and that God is also a person you can really talk to \u2013 another human.<\/p>\n<p><strong>JWK:<\/strong> <strong>In your view, do science and faith support or contradict one another?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>JY:<\/strong> I\u2019d say that they really support one another. There\u2019s a long held idea that they are in opposition, but look at how the Vatican has adapted to science with what we\u2019ve learned from the Monsignor Marcelo\u00a0S\u00e1nchez Sorondo, the Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences there at the Vatican. The Bible is not a scientific view of creation, it\u2019s a theological view. If you focus on the details on the Bible \u2013 like the 6 days of creation \u2013 if you\u2019re a literalist, then you might see science and faith being in conflict. But if you understand the Bible as a philosophical view \u2013 a book of ideas, of the mysteries of existence \u2013 then science and faith are not in contradiction. Science shares many of the same questions that faith does \u2013 why are we here? What does it all mean? Those are questions we try to answer with science too and you might say, &#8220;Oh eventually science will try and answer everything,&#8221; but I think that\u2019s impossible \u2013 that science may discover there was a big bang, but then you have to say, what caused the big bang? There\u2019s always going to be another question you can\u2019t answer. A great expression I once heard is, \u201cThere\u2019s always going to be gaps in what we know and God can always live in the gaps.\u201d<span id=\"yui_3_16_0_ym18_1_1459430798064_21085\"><span id=\"yui_3_16_0_ym18_1_1459430798064_21084\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Story of God with Morgan Freeman Season 1 on DVD January 10, 2017 and Season 2 premiers on National Geographic, January 16th.<\/p>\n<p><em>Encourage one another and build each other up \u2013 <\/em><strong>1 Thessalonians 5:11<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s today\u2019s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture. The six-part event series The Story of God with Morgan Freeman premieres Sunday, April 3 @ 9:00 PM ET on National Geographic Channel. NatGeo&#8217;s ambitious series will look at such perpetual questions\u00a0as Who is God? Where did we come from? Why does evil happen?&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":225,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,9004,8,9,11,1085,7192,1591,14,9005,17,19,20,23,4206,1031,2303,31],"tags":[9006],"class_list":["post-7055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-buddhism","category-catholic-church","category-christianity","category-doctrine","category-forgiveness","category-freedom","category-good-works","category-gratitude","category-hinduism","category-interfaith-dialogue","category-islam","category-journalism","category-mormonism","category-power-of-prayer","category-science","category-sikh-faith","category-television","tag-producer-james-younger"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Producer James Younger finds meaning in &quot;The Story of God&quot; (this Sunday on NatGeo)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/2016\/03\/producer-james-younger-finds-meaning-in-the-story-of-god-this-sunday-on-natgeo.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Producer James Younger finds meaning in &quot;The Story of God&quot; (this Sunday on NatGeo)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here\u2019s today\u2019s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture. 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Kennedy","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/e5d5ef9caeb6b01bcbf08ca6de6591c2","name":"John W. Kennedy","description":"John W. Kennedy is the founder and Dir. of Development of The Creative Universe Entertainment\u2122, a media consultation and development company focusing on the creation, development and support of high-quality mainstream entertainment that upholds positive timeless values, including trust in God. Current projects include \"Bryant Park\" (an uplifting romantic-comedy) and \"Photo Finish\" (an award-winning sci-fi TV pilot). He has written over 100 children's novels based on episodes of the Cartoon Network series \"Ben 10\", \"Ben 10: Alien Force\", \"Ben 10: Ultimate Alien\", \"Ben 10: Omniverse\" and \"Generator Rex\" among others. He also writes Beliefnet\u2019s \"Faith, Media &amp; Culture\" blog. Previously, he has produced successful news and talk programming for CNN, Fox News, Pax TV and SiriusXM. Specialties: Script Writing, Movie\/TV Novelizations &amp; Adaptations, TV Content Creation and Development, Creative Consultation, Producing and Booking News and Talk shows. He can be reached for writing, producing and consulting services at 516-640-1182.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/author\/jkennedy"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7055"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7312,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7055\/revisions\/7312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}