`Welcome to another live, free, open, spontaneous and completely unrehearsed discussion in our series about Religion for Our Time. Our Subject today IS THE RELIGION OF THE DIE A COP-OUT? [Image of Mrs. Wippleton.] `Our moderator for today's program: Mrs. Sloan Wippleton, former screen and television actress, wife of noted financier and socialite Gregg Wippleton and mother of four lovely children. Mrs. Wippleton is also chairman of the First Presbyterian Church's Committee for Religious Tolerance. Mrs. Wippleton.'

She bursts into a smile and speaks with enthusiasm.

`Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We are fortunate today to have a very interesting subject for discussion and one I'm sure you've all wanted to learn more about: the Religion of the Die. We also have a very distinguished panel to discuss it. Dr. Rhinehart [image shifts briefly to Dr. Rhinehart, who, dressed totally in black with a heavy black turtleneck sweater and suit, looks vaguely ministerial. He chews on but does not smoke a large pipe throughout] is one of the most controversial figures of the last year. His papers and books on dice theory and therapy have scandalized the psychiatric world, and his readings from The Book of the Die have scandalized the religious world. He has earned from the American Association of Practicing Psychiatrists a Special Condemnation. Nevertheless, many individuals have rallied round Dr. Rhinehart and his religion, some of them not in mental hospitals. Last year Dr. Rhinehart and his followers began opening Dice Centers called Centers for Experiments in Totally Random Environments and thousands of people have gone through these centers, some reporting deeply religious experiences, but others suffering severe breakdowns. No matter how opinions differ, all agree that Dr. Rhinehart is a very controversial man.

`Dr. Rhinehart, I'd like to open our discussion by asking you our central question for today, and then asking each of our other guests to comment on the same thing: "Is your religion of the Die a Cop-out?"

`Sure,' says Dr. Rhinehart, chewing contentedly on his pipe, then he remains silent. Mrs. W. looks first expectant and then nervous.

`How is it a cop-out?'

`In three ways.'

Again R. chews wordlessly on his pipe, serene and satisfied.

`In what three ways?'

R. lowers his head and the camera pans down to see him rubbing something between his hands and then drop onto the small table in front of him a die; it is a six. When the camera pans back up to his face the viewer sees R. looking directly out 'from the screen. With a benevolent glow, he holds his pipe steady and smokeless, looking at the viewer. Five seconds, ten seconds pass. Fifteen.

`Dr. Rhinehart?' says a feminine voice off-screen. Image shifts to a serious Mrs. W. Then back to R. Then to Mrs. W., frowning, then to R., exhaling smokeless air from an open mouth. Then, uncertainly, appears the image of Father Wolfe, who looks as if he's concentrating on what he's going to say.

`Rabbi Fishman. Perhaps you'd like to lead off today,' says the off-screen feminine voice.

Rabbi Fishman, short, dark and fortyish, directs his words intently first toward Mrs. W. and then to R.

`Thank you, Mrs. Wippleton. I find everything Dr. Rhinehart has said this afternoon extremely interesting, but he seems to be missing the chief point: the religion of the Die is a resignation from the status of man: it is a worship of chance, and as such, a worship of that which has always been man's adversary. Man is above all else the great organizer, the great integrator, while a dicelife as I understand it, is a destroyer of integration and unity. It is a cop-out from human life, but not into the life of random nature as some of Dr. Rhinehart's critics have maintained. No. Nature, too, is an organizer and an integrator. But the religion of the Die represents in a way the worship of disintegration, dissolution and death. It is anti- I find it another sign of the sickness of our times.'

[Camera pans smoothly back to Mrs. W.] `That's very interesting, Rabbi Fishman. You've certainly given us much food for thought. Dr. Rhinehart, would you like to comment?'

'Sure.'

R. stares again serenely out at the television audience, benignly chewing on his pipe. Five seconds, ten, twelve.

`Father Wolfe.' says Mrs. W. in a high-pitched voice.

`My turn?'

[Image of round, red-faced blond-haired Father Wolfe, looking at first uncertainly off toward Mrs. W., then staring into the camera like a prosecuting attorney.]

`Thank you. The religion of the Die is, no matter how Dr. Rhinehart may try to weasel out of it this afternoon, the worship of the Antichrist. There is a moral law, er, a moral order to the universe which God created, and the surrender of one's freewill to the decisions of dice is the most outrageous and complete crime against ah God that I can imagine. It is to surrender to sin without raising a fist. It is the act of a ah coward.

`Cop-out is too mild a word. The religion of the Die is a crime, against ah God and against the dignity and grandeur of man created in ah God's image. Free will distinguishes man from ur God's other creatures. To surrender that gift may well be that sin against the Holy Spirit which is unforgivable. Dr. Rhinehart may be well educated, he may well be a medical doctor, but his so-called er religion of the Die is the most unh poisonous, unh obnoxious and satanic thing I have ever heard of ah.'

`May I comment on that?' says R.'s voice from off-screen, and his image appears, wordless and relaxed, staring out, obviously not intending to speak a single further word. It is as if the channel had been switched every time his face appears on the screen.

Five, seven, eight, ten seconds pass.

`Dr: Dart,' says a subdued female voice.

Dr. Dart appears, young, dynamic, handsome, cigarette smoking, nervous, intense, brilliant.

'I find Dr. Rhinehart's performance today rather amusing, and perfectly consistent with the clinical picture I have formed of him through a reading of his work and through discussions with people who have known him. We can't understand the religion of the Die and the peculiar way it is a cop-out unless we can understand the pathology of its creator and of its followers. Basically, as Dr. Rhinehart himself has acknowledged, he is a schizoid. [The image on the screen becomes that of Dr. Rhinehart, benignly looking at the viewer, and remains through the next part of Dr. Dart's analysis.]

Dr. Rhinehart's alienation and anomie apparently reached such a degree that he lost a single identity and became a multiple personality. The literature is full of case studies of this schizoid type, and he differs from the typical case only in the large number of personalities he is apparently able to adopt. The compulsive nature of this role playing is masked by the use of the dice and by the mumbo-jumbo religion of the Die created around it. The pathological pattern of alienation and anomie is common in our society, and the significant number of people influenced by the religion of the Die manifests the appeal of a verbal structure to mask and support the psychological disintegration which has taken place. [Image of Dr. Dart reappears.] 'The religion of the Die is not so much a cop-out as it is, like all religions, a comforter, a confirmation and, one might say, an elevation of the psychological debilities of the individual who embraces the religion. Passivity before the rigid God of Catholicism or Judaism is one form of cop-out, passivity before the flexible and unpredictable God of chance is another. Both can be understood only in terms of individual and group pathology.'

Dr. Dart turns back to Mrs. Wippleton. Her image appears, serious and sincere.

'What kind of nonsense is that about the rigid God of Judaism?' says Rabbi Fishman's voice from off-screen. 'I'm just reporting commonly accepted psychological theory,' Dart answers.