daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies. today, we bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. >> the author of several books on religion including his latest, god, human history. they interviewed at the l.a. times festival of books. >> my name is jonathan. i'm very pleased to do's you to

resident, the author of best-selling books on religion. a commentator in world affairs, producer host of cutting-edge programming, and he is here today to talk about his latest best-selling book, god, history. thank you. [applause] >> you mention in your book that you were raised as what you described as a tepid muslim. you converted to fundamentalist christianity during your college years and then returned to his lawn. you describe your book were generally as a believer and a pantheist. at the same time, your public images the go to guy for westerners who seek to understand his long. how would you describe your

engagement with, and your attitude toward his lawn today? >> that's a big question. somehow over the last decade i have become the muslim. it is not a position i want to be in as well. every religion in the world is a diverse religion and by no means should anyone, muslim or not confuse me as the representative of islam, or american islam for that matter. it's important to understand that religion, doesn't matter what you're talking about or what part of the world, religion is far more often a matter of identity than a matter of beliefs and practices. for many people, particularly

nonreligious people, they think religion is about what you believe. what you do, that religious people pick up a scripture, read it and then they go out and do that. that's not how it works. the best example is the fact that according to religion in public life, 71% of americans are christian. seven out of ten americans are christian. really? think about it. seven out of ten americans go to church on a regular basis. seven out of ten americans can tell you anything about jesus except that he was born in a manger and died on a cross #of course not. the vast majority when they say i am a christian, are not making a faith statement, they're

making an identity statement. for me, islam is deeply a part of who i am, it's how i understand my place in the world, it's how i understand who i am in my relationship to the divine. it forms my core values, the way i see the world in my role in it. i also recognize that there are many ways to express this religion and there are many muslims who would rapidly disagree with my expression of it. and i'm cool with that. >> when i reviewed your book in the jewish journal, a pointed out that the biography of god has been many times before but, your book represents a quantum we from what has been written

before. that's because of your essential premise. it turns out the compulsion to humanize the divine is hardwired into our brains. that's why it has become a central feature in almost every tradition the world has known. the very process to which the concept of god arises in human evolution compels us to fashion god in our own image. it's fair to say you written a darwinian view of god. so how and why is a belief a revolutionary advantage for homo sapiens. >> it turns out that it's not. here's the thing that's interesting. the book began with me trying to

get the very origins of the spirits. how did it arise revolve. we know that the religious impulse, and i keep saying the religious impulse. religion is therefore relying solely on the material evidence at hand. maybe 14000 years old. the religious impulse predates homo sapiens. we have evidence and neanderthals we have evidence in pro magnum. the impulse that is this belief that we are more than just our material self. there is something that is eternal there is something

beyond the material realm. that idea is older than we are as a species. and, it's universal. an idea risen in every culture in all parts of the world. this creates an evolutionary puzzle. if something like that is universal or could be traced back even before the species existed there must be a reason for it. there must be an evolutionary advantage for this impulse to be so deeply part of the human condition. for 200 years we've been trying to answer what is that advantage. there have been countless

answers given. it created social cohesion among communities. if you have social cohesion you could survive in groups that don't have it. we know that answer doesn't work well. first because our primitive ancestors created their identity not by rallying around abstract single symbols but through kinship and blood. that's what created the advantage. others have said it's all certain ministries and helps us understand the world. that marinade may not be true. there is no evidence it creates that advantage at all. what most scientists have come to recognize is that it's an evolutionary disadvantage. in terms of the costs that it

forces when it comes to time, resources, energy, all things that are better served trying to survive that if anything it's a disadvantage in our evolution. then, the big mystery is, why. if you are a believer, the answer is, because it does. because there's a god and god created us and that's who we are. there's a thing in our brain that forces us to your look for the other, the transcendent. the divine. if you're not a believer, then the best answer we have come up with is that it is an accident.

it is an evolutionary byproduct of of some other that arose deep in our evolutionary past. there are a few possibilities about what those are. one is this thing called cognitive thirst referred to as the hyper- active agency detective device. this thing in our brain that arises early in our evolution that forces us to see agency a natural phenomenon. it is the reason you think every bump in the night is caused by someone doing the bumping. that's what it is. you can see why it has evolutionary vantages. better to assume that someone is

bumping and survive the other culprit they referred to as the theory of mind. that's what's caps on in your brain, sometime around three or five months. when you start to realize that other beings who look like you, feel like you. that other people have the same emotions and ideas, same thoughts that you have. those are both evolutionary adaptations that, according to their house and go, an accident, a byproduct never intended, created the symbols towards believe in the supernatural, divine, or immaterial.

i don't really take sides of an argument. i am a believer. i believe in god. i believe the human condition is designed in a way for us to have more than just this material experience. that the fullness of the human condition involves recognizing that, this is not it. your empirical senses are not the only way to understand the reality of the world. there is more. there is a reality. there's no proof. by the way, anyone who tells you they can prove it one way or another is trying to comfort you. you can just ignore them.

>> i'm going to stay with this intriguing cognitive mechanism called the hypersensitive agency detection device. one of the most haunting moments in human history is when you conjure a real-life version of the biblical you who notices a tree in the forest, with a trunk that has grown into the shape that resembles a human face. you describe, she transforms the tree into a totem, an object of worship. she may bring it all friends, she may even start praying to it for help. thus, religion is born, albeit by accident. you explain in the book that the detection devices meant to detect human agency and to human

costs. isn't it counterrevolutionary for eve to transform the faith in the tree trunk which exists into something otherworldly? or to follow your phrasing, if there's something that goes bump in the night, may be a real material threat if you dismiss it as a supernatural being your depriving yourself against a real threat. >> the device, what they would say is that the device forces you to pay attention to something you would otherwise ignore. the knocks on a tree that looks like a face, you might ignore it. but you are evolutionary adapted to notice it. that is when fight or flight starts.

once you realize it is not, that is one theory of mind takes over. here is the thing of theory of mind that is absolutely fascinating. it is the thing in your cognitive development that makes you realize that someone who looks like you also feels the way you do. and empathy device. what is amazing, is that researchers show that we will apply the same emotional connection to an object that may display some human characteristics, but is not human. you can see this in young children. if you give a small child a car, she will imagine the headlights our eyes and the grill is a mouth and will call the car fred. it would be like would you like

to eat fred. the child knows the car is a hunk of plastic. there's a difference between the car and mod. cool because the car exhibits certain human characteristics like a face, or weirdly, the most or strongest version of this is bipedal motion. something that has bipedal motion, which is naturally are cognitively attuned to implants on that nonhuman thing, human emotions, human motivation and characteristics. because the one fundamental thing that we know about ourselves, and this again as part of our evolutionary

adaptation, we have a soul in the concept of the soul is the universal ideal. there's a researcher just down the road here at fuller has done enormous research and has shown that children regardless of where they're from and they come from religious families or not, children are born within an eight concept. that body and mind, you can call it psyche if you want to, you can call it buddha nature, you can call it she, you can call it whatever. we know what we mean. body and mind are separate and distinct. that is a belief that we are born with. a belief that we have to unlearn. the reason for that happens to be because of the cognitive

processes going on. in this case she sees a tree and freezes because he thinks it's a face. now, she recognizes it has something that looks like a face. she may accentuate that base or give that tree certain human traits because it has certain human characteristics. the most important trait she gives it is a soul or spirit. that is what she has. the theory is that out of this experience is born tens of thousands of years later what we would refer to as religion. again, good theory. there is no way of proving it. it's as good a theory as we were meant to think this way. it is up to you which one you

think makes more sense. >> i would like to frame a question in terms of a public and private event. i heard a passenger on the southwest flight where the engine blew it describe how he addressed a prayer to god, we will need you to send us some angels now. on that same day, a dear friend of mine buried his 13-year-old son who died in a traffic accident. god did not send any angels to save the child. this is a fundamental the illogical puzzle. as i learn from my wife and was a psychotherapist, you might say that both were engaging and magical thinking. in the realm of psychology, magical thinking is dysfunction. do you allow for the fact that religion or the proposition that

religion encourages her consists of magical thinking? >> that's a very old and quite common critique of religion. it goes back to freud and the concept that what religion is is basically a means of alleviating anxiety. the anxiety of the human condition. it's a good notion that floyd doesn't know much about religion. it's an anxiety creating mechanism. that's what it is. . . interested in is the idea of magical thinking and religion as the face of psychosis. what i'm more interested in is the way both of those individuals, their conception of the divine and what the

divine should or should not do, how the divine should or should not act in any situation is wholly predicated on the knowledge of themselves in other words what they have done, and this goes back deep into our evolutionary cognitive past, if this is how the very concept of god arose in human evolution and it's only natural that once we start to really begin to actualize the divine, when it's not just an impulse in our brain but when we start to actualize the divine and start to create images of the divine , when we begin to write stories in which the divine is a character cannot help first and foremost fashion design to look like us with a head and arms and legs and maybe some distinguishing characteristic that sets it

apart so maybe it has wings or it is bigger than we are. but it is a person with superhuman powers that is what it is. we have no choice but to put the divine in a narrative in which he acts the way that we would act if we were in that narrative and which he responds to situations the way that we would respond and we would bring to a situation. so, when we are in a place of want or worry or existential angst, whether we are believers or not when we begin to sort of strive and have the experience

of transcendence whether it is deliberate or involuntary, we have no choice. we really cannot help it but to immediately put ourselves on our owfromour own personalities, our likes, dislikes, prejudice, everything and expect that god too responded to us as though that god were us. that's basically all of human religion in a nutshell whether you are talking about east or west and i guess what i'm trying to say is there is a way to have that experience without necessarily personify in god or humanizing god because although the fact of the matter is that humanizing god allows for a much deeper connection with the

divine obviously if your god looks and acts and thinks just like you do then it creates a pretty close bond with. it allows for the deep spiritual experience. the problem is that that god also carries your prejudices and your bias and everything that is awful about you. you construct a god that represents all of your good and bad points and that is superhuman with no super limitations but flaws an walls e than anything else that explains why religion has been a force for good and bad and i think that if you dehumanize god and strip away this personality that you confronted and think of

godless as a divine personality and more as a sort of creative force of the universe that c you can tap into that underlines all of creation, that is indeed all of creation you can have the same kind of spiritual connection that without all of that negative baggage that often comes with belief in god. >> you write in your new book you choose to believe there is something beyond the t material realm. something real and notable but you also say faith is a choice. no one knows better than you and let's recall the greek root of the word heresy is choice and fundamentalists in all faith, and i plaintively say judaism, christianity and islam all

exists that any choice but the choice that they made this heretical. do you believe that true belief is a deadly enemy of choice? >> it may be the wrong word for it, but i do think that this sort of unthinking exclusive claim to truth that you get is an enemy of choice. i do believe it is fundamentally a choice. the problem is so many of us have this argument about whether faith is rational or not. of course it isn't rational. it's not supposed to be a rational thing. it is an emotion.

like every emotion you have, it is subjective and dependent on your experiences, your world yow and like all those emotions it just simply can't be explained in thesese rational ways. you can't just reason a wave of. it doesn't always make sense. it has everything to do with who you are as an individual and get very few people would demand proof of love. like you love me let me hear your proof. i can easily disproved your love and that is absurd. if someone in your life is telling you that, you should probably run the other way. [laughter] but you hear that about faith all the time and i think partly it has to do with what i think

is an unquestionable fact which is whatever faith is, whatever it is, however you want to define it, whatever it is, it exists in here that it is the result of complex electrochemical reactions in your brain. that's what it is. that is just a fact. but i don't see why that has to threaten your faith. of course it exists in your brain. everything exists in your brain. everything. every experience you haveyt ever had. this experience right here is the result of electrochemical reactions in the brain. so why would faith be any different to say that we know the mechanism whereby the faith experience can be happy and therefore is no longer

legitimate is absurd. we know the mechanism whereby the love experience is had. we know it is a chemical reaction in your brain. do you legitimize the emotion or does it devalue the object of your love? of course not. it's all in your brain. so i think because of that, people just simply say that we don't need to take it seriously anymore. then we don't need to take any emotion seriously anymore. >> i feel equipped to quibble on one point. i would agree that everything that we perceive we perceive in our brains that this exists outside of our brains and that

prompts me to ask how do you distinguish between fact which exists outside of our perception that can be proven by repeated experiments and that which we describe as god which we can enever prove by repeating. >> the trick philosophers use of course if they talk aboutck multiple observers. can something be objectively observed and so therefore that's why it might exist beyond my own experience. when i leave this room do all of you cease to exist? maybe. i can't prove that you don't. but the argument is no because there is another observer that we'll see you. if that is how we are going to prove it, then faith still works because it has multiple

observers began, let's get out of this mode. i'm not interested in the question of whether god exists ort not. again that it's a question that is personal, subjective and a choice. i am interested in what s we men when we say god and more often than not, what it means when we say godt is ourselves. that's what we mean. a divine version of ourselves and i think that is what is truly problematic whether youob are a believer or not. >> one of the ironies in your bookok is that two of the three great judaism and mama wa [inaudible] human or otherwise and even christianity had its before the protestant reformation that strict the churches of imagery.

so to use the deity seems to coexist with three great religions that to 1 degree or another command us not to do that.r >> this case with islam is the best example of this because it is a very, very strict rule about humanizing god, thinking of god in human terms. in fact it is one of only ama vy small handful of religions in the history of religion that doesn't explicitly claim human beings were created in this image. part of the reason it doesn't believe that is because the concept of god has to be utterly unhuman. whatever god is a distant human. and yet even in that incredibly iconoclastic religion, when you read y the koran, there are

multiple verses in which it talks about god's all seeing eyes and loving hands and refers to these deep ways. the proper response would be if poetry and we are supposed to read it as a metaphor. that is clearly what is being said here. otherwise if we take it literally, then we are denying the single most important restriction in islam which is the restriction because if you add some more advice to get to -- we don't want to just see what god looks like that to do so is to limit god and limiting is the greatest sin t of islam. any limits on god. so if you think of god in human

terms, then by definition you are limiting god. so if you say god has two hands, why not free, why not 100, why not 10,000. all of that gets you into this l sort of theological morass whh is why there is a sort of blanket prohibition. the problem of course is that mostsl muslims because of the wy the islamic authority in certain schools of law have surfaced codified interpretations, most muslims don't read the koran in its figurative sense. from the beginning, you do have these great islamic theologians who confronted with this massive oxymoron. number one, you are not about to describe god in human terms. number two, if describes god in

humann terms what are you supposed to do about that and the answer was it's none of your business. [laughter] if it doesn't make sense then it's just move on. so what i find fascinating about that conflict is there was a group that said there is a problem here that this central paradox can't continue. we can't say a divine unity has no shape or form whatsoever can be limited by any means and at the same time we read it literally when it's as god has hands that we can't abide by that and so this new religious movement really grows out of

islam. but by th theby the way, it wasa lot of ways. it tapped into the jewish and christian mysticism in order to approach not just the scripture, but the religion and its authority in apt completely new and different way. >> would you agree thatou christianity provides this with text for your argument because although theologians speak of the mystery of the trinity, one service dog becomes flesh. is that an example of the phenomenon that you are describing? >> guess by the way it is the mystery of the trinity of any statement is another way of saying don't worry about it. just look over there. the problem with the trinity is that the church fathers themselves realized that it made

absolutely no sense whatsoever. you cannot have a unified conception of god that can then divide into other forms and t still have a unified conception of god. and a lot of these gymnastics that have been used in order to explain it away don't explain it away which is why as i write in the book for the first 30400 years ofe christianity, monotheistic christianity was a kind of outlier that there's actually two different gods. there is broad and defenders jesus. they are both god just not the same. that was actually one of the primary ways until the third century in which christianity

spread into the hellenized portal. the problem with christianity goes away because fundamental is the incarnation, the belief that jesus had only jesus is god. i think part of the reason is the most successful religion in the world and for that reason i will continue to be a most successful religion in the world a wayause it has in allowed us to fully surrender to this cognitive impulse. we are all born as i said with a natural inclination to humanize the divine whether you believe in the divine or not. atheists do this as much as the most fervent believer does. when you ask an atheist did you believe in god they will say now and then when you sa see what yu

mean by god they begin to describe themselves. everyone does this. and with christianity does is it says do you want to know what god is com is, but the greatesty in the universe, do you want to know what god is? imagined the most perfect person. that's god. imagine the most perfectly loving, perfectly kind compassionate human being, that's god. that is a profoundly potent way of thinking about something that is beyond human thinking. and what it does more than anything else as it allows us to -- i describe it as a sort of scratching a cognitive itch. that is kind of the key. to it and i think for a lot of people come it creates a very deep bond

that people want with the divi divine. whatever god i is it is wholly other and so ho if so how am i supposed to know this thing it was just a person who lived 2,000 years ago and more importantly i can craft that person into anyone i want that person to be. ink can think of jesus as a radical social reformer who stood up for the poor and dispossessed against the powerful and strong or i can just as easily think of that person as you know, a middle-class small business owner who really hated taxes. [laughter] y.? because that is who i am. this is the thing like when a couple of years ago with you remember when meghan kelly said

i believe her exact words were it idoes the fact that both jess and santa claus were white. [laughter] let's give that woman her own show. [laughter] and my response, forget about santa claus but my response was she's right. her jesus is white because she's white. if you go to ethiopia, jesus is black. and if you go to kyoto, jesus is japanese. you know, if you ever get a chance to go to nazareth to go to the church in nazareth, they actually have this incredible display of paintings of jesus sent from all over the world, and that is all you need to see is the way that jesus takes on not just the characteristics and personality that literally a race of the person who worships him.

the jesus that they have from thailand is blue because that's the way in which divine supernatural figures and i'm mythology are often expressed. that, to me, i think is the true power of christianity. >> one way to describe what's happening in syria is that russia is a nominally eastern orthodox country and iran are supportingtr a regime against various sunni nation's in both the united states and israel are playing a role in that fight. another way to look at the same picture is to say that religious affiliations on all parts of whawhatis at stake is all global geopolitics. i feel like you have figured your answer my question is which of these views do you favor.

>> what's happening is what happens h so often in human history not just contemporary but throughout history which is we have chosen to play a game over power and resources on the lives of rates of thousands of innocente. people. to say that it's about religion or ethnicity i think is to betray the death of hundreds of thousands of people as a result of the conflict. said i'm sorry. when i talk about syria i get very tongue-tied because it's a situation in which we are all in one way or another directly responsible for what is happening.

this is geopolitics at its worst. and i guess part of the reason i get a little bit hesitant and choked up is because i don't see an answer to it. i don't know a way out. maybe if you asked me this question in 2011 i would have had an answer but i don't have an answer in 2018 and that is all i have to say. >> i'm going to ask one more question and then we will go to the floor. a question you might want to get ready to raise your hand and i will call for questions. my final question is when i would ask if we were having a cup of coffee. i have been reading observers who say that what is happening on the ground in that literally in the air is a literal battle between israel and iran. dole you feel that we will see a

war in the middle east? >> i don't see a war between iran and israel because neither side has anything to gain from it. what i am worried about however is a war between iran and saudi arabia. i think that is where the true geopolitical line are being divided in that region. and unfortunately i think with this administration and with the charade that is underway right now with the new prince who is the leader -- this band just finished like a weeklong tour of the united states. did anybody notice? being fêted in hollywood, he had tom friedman basically

worshiping him because he got a nice meal out of it. i don't even know what that was about. he was on the cover of "time" magazine. this man who was responsible for a genocide tha has taken placenn jenin and was personally responsible for a genocide in jenin date codes and in -- yem yemen. he said what he sees as the true spirit of the french revolutiono and someone smartly said this is because of the beheadings? [laughter] is that where you see the connection? saudi arabia, iran is a terrible, to radical authoritarian regime that regularly denies the rights of its citizens, presses religious

minorities and supports terror groups around the region. i got that out of the way. okay. saudi arabia, our best friend being led by a demand that's it from coast to coast in this country and that sort of ridiculous profilesid written by the journalists who basically just kind of fell all over themselves around him saudi arabia is a draconian authoritarian backward kingdom that slaughters its own people and denies them their basic rights that might very soo soon allow women to drive, so therefore it's a great reformer all of a sudden. we are being fed lies by the udgime and the millions upon

millions of dollars they have spent on american pr and advertising firms in order to get us to believe those lies. the conflict is between iran and saudi arabia. that's what is happening in syria and in lebanon, it's what is happening in the yemen. this particular administration in seeking such an explicitly pro- saudi line to this conflict is i think any planning the possibility ofor thepossibilityr between the two countries, not a cold war. i'm not afraid of israel and iran i of going to war. i'm a creative israel and saudi arabia going to war. >> wait until you get a microphone. go ahead, this gentleman. >> think you firsthank you firsf

your insights. could you talk a little bit about the irony of the individuals throughout history who are affluent weaponize in the actual god speed to >> an important question because i mostly what i've been talking about is the religious impulse toward the divine and transcendence and however you want to specify it. but religion itself is a man-made institution, literally. like people with a penises, a man-made institution. and it's fundamentally about authority and power. that's why it exists. the very first temples that we created for the god ar were meat

to house them away from the prying e eyes of everybody else. that only the priests could actually enter into these sanctuaries. the priestss, would dress and watch the god and then occasionally, occasionally they would remove them from their home and take them out so everyone else could see them and then immediately put them back where they belonged. it's all about who has access to god. so it shouldn't come as a surprise that the ten cut ten br 14,000 years to say something called institutionalized religion exists that it has always been wrapped up in power and money and control and authority. ..

>> to allow a community of faith and like-minded people to communicate cells and to eacher other this experience of faith. it is a way to express what is fundamentally an expressive ball. and faith is much bigger and much more mysterious and cannot be contained and as long as you recognize that you are much better off knowing the difference between the man who wears the shiny rope and the person there to experience

another way of being or a moment of knowing. >> what grant the mom? >> are very specific things that drew me that fundamentally the difference between mystics and mystical men and the mainstream orthodox meant today think of religion as opposed to government and what religion does it towards god and the

path you take but they are not interested in the past or in the signpost but getting there they are not interested in knowing about god but knowing god by experiencing god directly and often times what happened is as a result of that fundamental desire that religion is a shell in order to experience god and as r a result they tend to inject authority the person in between you and god and the district on -- the mystic has no interest in a tento to reject law and doctrine and

then you can get closer to god and the mystics have no interest in that idea that concept of dualism with right and wrong these are human constructs nothing to do with the divine and then also they tend to be interested in a different level of scripture and the sea scripture like a thing to break through it's more than just words but there is a hidden internal meeting that allows for the ultimate goal to become one with the divine. i am drawn to all forms of mysticism but i ask right into

this form going back to the languages issue the metaphors or the symbols that i'm the most comfortable with my favorite quote something that the buddha once said that if you want to draw water don't dig 61-foot will long -- well. but what the buddha was trying that it doesn't matter which well you choose the water is the same you should choose a well because that helps you to reach the water. the symbols in the metaphors and the language is helpful to make a different and put words to your thoughts and emotions especially talking about something as abstract as the

divine need a metaphor. a metaphor. jesus is a pretty good metaphor but it is just a metaphor. the different ways in which we talk about god is nothing more than language don't confuse the well for the water is what i would say that i thank you very much as an alumnus it is a fascinating talk you participated so what is your single most important lesson that you learned from this if

you can encapsulate that. >> thank you for that i love that question because it has very much to do with what i said a moment ago the reason i wanted to do that shows i wanted to take t viewers on an experience to show you something that at first glance looks weird and scary and foreign and exotic is so beyond anything you would feel or think and then hopefully through me acting as a linguist or a translator i would teach you the symbols and metaphors and by the end hopefully you would realize it's not thatld weird actually i

kind of believe something close to that. and that is what i was most proud of is how often people came up to me and said i never thought about it that way or voodoo in that way but the most interesting was scientology because everybody in this town has an opinion on scientology. [laughter] but you don't know what it is. know the we corruption and abuses of the church but a religion is not a church. right? more than 1 billion catholics cannot just say because of the pedophilia scan all those billions of catholic are all somehow responsible for those crimes.

that is the one that was interesting that people have the hardest time t with and the hardest time to admit i guess it's not that weird or any weirder than any other religion. that is the t thing. sometimes people dismiss scientology because they think it is all science fiction and my response is have you read the bible? [laughter] one more question. >> can you talk about the role ofal women and in connection with his mom? people understand the role of

woment and early. >> this is fascinating. obviously religion always reflects society there is a phrase that is a fancy way to say we construct heaven, cosmic mere off whatever or like so when we were semi- independent villages with her own tribal deity, hasn't had a bunch of different gods know god was in charge of any other , they all came to together and would make decisions for everyone and when those tribes began to coalesce into kingdoms and empires, so did have it now all of a sudden there was a king all the

others and nobody got to say anything et cetera et cetera. part of that has to deal with the gender as well so that he wrote -- rosewood we were mad when we were wandering gods of themoon and the rain in sky it guided us in large part because despite the fact that i outlined very clearly in the women were responsible for the majority of the nourishment of the prehistoric paleolithic community because they were primarily gatherers to supply the vast majority of the food

so the dvds were primarily deity and when he began to settle down and swapped beers for plows as an agriculturalgr society, suddenly the earth deities began to matter the most. because it was very much seen as analogous to the fertility of women suddenly the female deities began to rise to the surface and women began to enjoy a far higher level in society because of the cited dominance of female deity.

but that was the began to settle for good and we had mass farming and once we decidedee they need a home so they started to build a house and then carving them in the house is where they were restricted, suddenly everything changed again and the man who once more began to job with this religion and then the male deities started to become prominent again once more because that structure and politics hesitated a change in the way of the way we thought of the headman -- heaven because men wanted to be in control of access to the god they became male once again.

this is not about religion or faith or the divine. divine has no gender. and it is genderless and primarily in society that are dominated and controlled by. of course religion is defined and interpreted by men and that leads to male-dominated societies as a man can do with them and most of the traditions that what is important is the recently as a result of widespread access to education greater knowledge and literacy have this

authority back to themselves they no longer have to wait for a man to read the scripture for you i can just read it myself. and now because of the greater accessibility to each other beyond the geographic lines and personal need those women have an opportunity to create actual religious movement and synagogues that preach this feminine that is absent throughout history. can buy coffee at signing area number one.

thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] by ste

watts. it runs an hour. >> ladies and gentlemen, it's 1:00 so we will start this big debate. >> it is 1:00 o'clock