Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps

that it's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream

van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC sounds.

This is a download from the BBC. For more information and our terms of use, go to BBC.co.uk slash radio three.

Ian, thanks very much indeed. On tonight's programme, less the death of God than our continuing need for religion.

That's the argument of two new books by Terry Eagleton, the doion of the left and of Roger Scruton, a noted conservative

thinker. Nietzsche may have told the death of God in 1883 and evolutionary biology, cultural

theory, Marxism have all followed in his wake. But what's remarkable, and these two new books,

are just the latest of a mounting number,

is how compelling seems our continuing need for the transcendent.

Maybe the most striking recent testament comes from that eminent German philosopher Jürgen Habermas,

whose 2008 essays called An Awareness of What is Missing, Faith and Reason in the Secular Age,

or in a different vein, just look at the prayers on Facebook. Tonight we'll talk to both Terry

Eagleton and Roger Scruton about the God-shaped hole in our lives and to Peter Watson, whose new book

on atheism is subtitled,

How We Have Sought to Live Since the Death of God, also to the Christian theologian, Elaine

Stalky, just back for the general synod of the Church of England.

But first, Terry Eagleton.

He may first have come to fame as a Marxist cultural theorist, but he's always been engaged with Christian

and particularly Catholic thought. In his new book, Culture and the Death of God, he challenges

the orthodoxy that sees the Enlightenment as a sustained attack upon the sacred. And in a quick,

hop, skip and a jump through post-enlightment thought, he shows how much the surrogates we invented to replace religion, not least culture,

...