Morgan Freeman Explores the Questions of Faith and God in a Six-Part TV Series

Coming in the spring, Academy Award Winner Morgan Freeman will host and will executively produce a six-part global TV series. The Story of God with Morgan Freeman will air globally in the spring on National Geographic Channels in 171 countries in 45 languages, and in Spanish on Nat Geo Mundo. This TV series will address questions like who is God? Where did we come from? Why does evil happen? What happens when we die?  The series will illuminate the remarkable similarities and differences among different faiths.

"Over the past few months, I've traveled to nearly 20 cities in seven different countries on a personal journey to find answers to the big mysteries of faith," said Freeman. "I've sung the call to prayer at a mosque in Cairo, taken meditation lessons from the Buddhist leader of the oldest line of reincarnating Lamas, discussed Galileo with the head of the Papal Academy of Sciences and explored the first instructions for the afterlife rendered in hieroglyphs inside the pyramids. In some places I found answers, and others led to more questions. The constant through it all is that we're all looking to be part of something bigger than us. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that we certainly are." 

Each episode of The Story of God with Morgan Freeman is centered on a different big question about the divine:  

•  Creation - Are there similarities among the religious creation stories from around the world? How do they compare with the scientific theory of the creation of the cosmos and the dawn of civilization? 
•  Who Is God? - How has the perception of God evolved over human history? Is God just an idea, and if so, can we find evidence of a divine presence in our brains? 
•  Evil - What is the root of evil and how has our idea of it evolved over the millennia? Is the devil real? The birth of religion may be inextricably tied to the need to control evil.

•  Miracles - Are miracles real? For many believers, miracles are the foundation of their faith. Others regard miracles as merely unlikely events on which our brains impose divine meaning. Belief in miracles, however we define them, could be what gives us hope and drives us to turn possibility into reality. 
•  End of Days - Violent upheaval and fiery judgment fill popular imagination, but was the lore of apocalypse born out of the strife that plagued the Middle East two millennia ago? The true religious meaning of the apocalypse may not be a global war, but an inner revelation.
•  Resurrection - How have beliefs in the afterlife developed, and how has our reaction to the afterlife changed the way we live this life? Now that science is making such rapid advances, we may soon be confronted with digital resurrection. What will that do to our beliefs?

To explore each of these topics, host and narrator Freeman went on the ground to some of humanity's greatest religious sites, including Jerusalem's Wailing Wall, India's Bodhi Tree, Mayan temples in Guatemala and the pyramids of Egypt. He traveled with archaeologists to uncover the long-lost religions of our ancestors, such as those at the 7500 B.C. Neolithic settlementÇatalhöyük in Turkey. He immersed himself in religious experiences and rituals all around the world, and became a test subject in scientific labs to examine how the frontiers of neuroscience are intersecting the traditional domain of religion. 

"As we put this series together, we sought answers to some of mankind's biggest questions, but in the end what surprised us most was to find how personal those answers were for each of us," said executive producers Lori McCreary and James Younger. "There is no wrong answer when it comes to God or what you believe, and we hope The Story of God will help open an interfaith dialogue about ideas and values that we all share, not that we disagree on." 

For more information on The Story of God with Morgan Freeman, visit www.natgeotv.com, our press room at FoxFlash.com or on Twitter using @NGC_PR. 

 

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