DOES GOD EXIST? JUST ASK PELL, JONES AND DAWKINS (Fin Review April 13)

Here are the edited highlights of the debate between Cardinal Pell, Richard Dawkins and Tony Jones on Monday night’s Q&A.

Pell: For some extraordinary reason God chose the Jews. They weren't intellectually or morally the equal of the Egyptians or the Persians. The poor little Jewish people, they were shepherds.

Jones: But being a shepherd isn’t a reflection on your intellectual capacity?

Pell: It is of your intellectual development.

Jones: Are you including Jesus, who was Jewish? Was he not intellectually up to it?

Pell: For some reason God chose a very difficult (hesitates)… but actually they are now an intellectual elite, because over the centuries they have been pushed out of every other form of work. Jesus is the greatest man that ever lived so I’ve got a great admiration for the Jews but we don't need to exaggerate their contribution.

Question: Explain in layman's terms how the universe came from nothing?

Dawkins: When you have matter and antimatter and you put them together, they cancel each other out and give rise to nothing. If you start with nothing the process can go into reverse.

Jones: Is the “nothing” you're talking about some creative force?

Dawkins: You can dispute exactly what is meant by nothing but whatever it is it’s very simple. (Audience laugh) Why is that funny?

Pell: I think it’s a bit funny trying to define nothing.

Jones: Do you accept humans evolved from apes?

Pell: Yeah, from Neanderthals.

Dawkins (outraged): Neanderthals were our cousins! We’re not descended from them and we’re both descended from...

Pell: Where will I find a Neanderthal today if they're my cousins?

Dawkins: They’re extinct.

Pell: That’s my point.

Jones: At what point was a soul imparted to the humans from God?

Pell: A soul is not like putting a spot of gin in a tonic. We know the first humans developed in Africa because of the drawings in caves. No such thing from Neanderthals.

Dawkins: Successive Popes have tried to suggest that the soul did indeed get added, rather like gin to tonic.

Pell: The soul is the principle of life. There are animal souls.

Dawkins: Do jellyfish...?

Pell (earnestly): All living things do. We have a voice box, which is one of the great miracles, so we can communicate our thoughts rather than just grunting.

Jones: Is it possible for an atheist to go to heaven?

Pell: Certainly. We will all be there as continuing persons in a new heaven and a new earth.

Jones: Billions of individual souls existing in some galactic space?

Pell (shrugging): How it will work out I've got no idea. It’s also the view of some of the Jews.

Dawkins: What’s going to happen when we die depends on whether we're buried or cremated. I don't believe you mean that the wafer turns into the body of Christ?

Pell (indignantly): I don't say things I don't mean. The son of God says, “This is my body. This is my blood,” and I’d much prefer take his word than yours.

Dawkins (snidely): So you do not mean that the wafer turns into the body in any sense in which normal English language usage would understand?

Pell: I remember when I was in England we were preparing some young English boys, they were from very... (Audience laugh) Thank you. Preparing them for the first communion. We Catholics believe there is a hell. I certainly believe in a place of purification. It will be like getting up in the morning and throwing the curtains back.

Jones: Why create a world with so much suffering?

Pell: My first Easter as a priest was in Italy. Very sad village. All the men were away in Germany or Switzerland getting big money, home only for three weeks a year. I said: "Well, look, Christ suffered too. Christ had a bad run.”

Jones (shifting awkwardly): Can I take it to a higher level? The Holocaust, genocide, famine? Why does an omnipotent God let these things happen?

Pell (frowning): Probably no people in history have been punished the way the Germans were. It’s a terrible mystery.

Jones (trying to hide his alarm): There’s a very strong argument saying the Jews of Europe suffered worse than the Germans.

Pell (nodding): That might be right. Certainly there was suffering in both.

Question: Cardinal, how can you be against gay marriage when equality and respect are the foundations of love?

Pell: Christians love everybody.

Jones: Do you believe homosexuality is part of God's natural order?

Pell: Creation is messy. The oriental carpet makers always leave a little flaw in their carpet.

Jones: Are you suggesting homosexuals are flawed?

Dawkins (tetchily): I’m interested in whether God is actually there.

Pell: So am I.

Some conversations defy satire.

KEVIN AND MALCOLM - TEA FOR TWO?

tiny.cc/dyq8d

Prince Charles famously fantasized about being reincarnated as one of Camilla Parker-Bowles' tampons. For my part, I wouldn't mind coming back as one of Kevin Rudd's tea-bags.

Last night on the ABC's Lateline, Tony Jones dangled before our eyes the tantalizing vision of Tea with Malcolm and Kevin. His guest, none other than former Liberal leader and current touchy-feely heart-throb Malcolm Turnbull, smiled with amused self-satisfaction when asked “is it true as reported that you and Kevin Rudd occasionally get together to talk about politics?” With a mischievous twinkle in his eye and a self-deprecating shrug Malcolm informed us somewhat primly that “Well we - not - you know, we've got together a couple of times and had a chat, had a cup of tea.”

A cup of tea? Somewhat taken aback, Tony failed to ask any of the follow-up killer questions such a response demanded and that he must surely now be kicking himself over. No wry "who poured?", no witty "did he bring the Iced Vovo's?" And even worse, the demon inquisitor of Q&A failed to ask the obvious glaring headline-begging scoop of the year: "So what on earth did you two talk about?"

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall! Or even better, a soggy tea-bag on the side of the saucer; for surely whatever Mal and Kev discussed of any import would have been done in hushed tones and barely audible whispers in between carefully measured sips of tea.

Enjoying their Earl Grey together were the two men who by all rights - at least in their minds - should currently be Her Majesty's Prime Minister and Her Majesty's Leader of the Opposition. The two men who have the most enviable opinion poll numbers by miles of any politicians in the country, state or federal. The two men who between them command the loyal affections of a vast swag of Australian voters. And the two men who are probably the most ruthlessly ambitious politicians of our era.

The two men who as we speak nonetheless wield virtually no political power whatsoever, sitting calmly having tea together. Uppermost in their minds, apart from the burning sense of injustice and impotent rage that fuels them both, would be the inescapable mathematics of minority government. In Australia, we are still only just coming to terms with what the Europeans have long taken for granted, and what the motley crew of independents instinctively took advantage of: hung parliaments are there to be exploited. No principle is so sacred that it can't be ditched or used as a bargaining chip. Power resides with he or she who is prepared to get off his or her arse and cross the floor.

Because Tony Jones so miserably failed in his duty to find out for us, I'm going to have to imagine how Canberra’s very own Tea Party conversation went.

Kevin: Strange, isn't it? How similar you and I are, mate. And how entwined our fates.

Malcolm: Indeed.

Kevin: Has it ever occurred to you, hypothetically of course, what you and I could achieve if we worked together, in terms of logistical political specificity?

Malcolm: Absolutely.

For several long, drawn out seconds all we hear are the gentle sound of spoons tinkling against porcelain.

Malcolm: In fact, dare I say it we damn well did work well together! We nearly had that whole CPRS thing done and dusted. In the bag.

Kevin: Indeed.

Slow slurping sounds.

Kevin: As I said, hypothetically speaking, off the cuff as it were, the question is this: were I to wrestle back the leadership, would you think about coming over? I could offer you whatever you wanted. Treasury? Foreign affairs? Climate change?

Malcolm: All three, perhaps?

They both laugh.

Kevin: The bottom line is this, to be fair dinkum about it. Would you and I make a formidable team? Yes, of course we would. And let's face it, there's no one else on my side of the fence I could trust! Haha.

Malcolm: Funny you should ask. Because I was pretty much thinking the same thing myself.

Kevin: Australia’s Dream Team.

Malcolm: Tony’s nightmare!

Alexander Downer and Graham Richardson have both already called on Julia Gillard to stand down. Kevin Rudd, it appears, is the only possible replacement if Labor is to avoid a NSW style implosion. He is the only one with the faintest hope of winning back Labor supporters, and of implementing the carbon tax with any credibility. With Malcolm by his side, it would be a walk in the park. Bob Ellis has pointed out Malcolm’s long-standing suitability for membership of the Labor Party, including his spell chairing the Republican movement. He remains extremely popular not only with certain disillusioned Liberals, but with disheartened Labor supporters, too. Having Malcolm on Kevin’s team would give them added economic clout, allow Labor to dispense with the tortuous relationship with the Independents, in particular Andrew Wilkie and his pokies’ ticking time bomb, and would turn Rudd’s possibility of winning in 2013 into an absolute certainty.

Could it be that Australia might soon see a major realignment of the political landscape? If only we could read the tea leaves.