my name is jonathan kirsch.

he is selling books on religion. he is a commentator of world affairs and cutting-edge television programming, journalism and entertainment. here's here to talk about his latest book, god, history. please welcome him. >> enqueue. [applause] >> thank you. >> you mention in your book you are raised as a tempted muslim. you converted to fundamentalist christianity during your college years and then you return to islam. you describe yourself more generally as a believer and a pantheist. at the same time your public image as the go to guy for

westerners who seek to understand islam. how would you describe your engagement with and your attitude toward islam today? >> that's a big question. it's true. somehow over the past decade i have become the muslim. it's not a position i want to be in but many religions are diverse and eclectic and by no means should anyone confuse me as the representative of islam or american islam for that matter. it doesn't really matter what religion you're talking about. religion is far more often a matter of identity than it is

beliefs and practices but i think a lot of people, particularly nonreligious people, they think religion is just about the things you believe, the things you do that religious people pick up scripture and read the scripture and the scripture tells them to do do something and they go do that. that's not actually how it works. 70% of americans are christian. seven out of ten americans are christian. really? i mean really. honestly. think about that. seven out of ten americans go to church on 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 of that seven out of ten are making a faith statement there making an identity statement. that's true regardless of what religion you talk about. for me islam is deeply a part of who i am. it's how i understand my place in the world, who i am and my relationship to the divine. it forms some of my core values, the way that i see the world and my role in it, but i also recognize that there are many, many ways to express this religion and that there are many, many muslims who got to disagree with my expression and i'm totally cool with that. >> when i had the opportunity to review your book in the jewish journal, i pointed out that the biography of god has been written many times before.

in a sense the bible is the biography of god. your book represents a quantum leap from what has been written before. that's because of your essential premise, it turns out that the compulsion to humanize the divine is hardwired into our brains which is why it has become a central feature in almost every tradition the world has ever known. the very process that god arises in human evolution compels us consciously or not to fashion god in our own image. i think it's fair to say you have written a darwinian biography of god and i want to ask how and why is the belief in a deity and evolutionary advantage for homo sapiens. >> okay. it turns out that it's not.

here's the thing that was really interesting for me. this began with me trying to get to the origins of the experience. where is the concept of god arise, how did it evolve. what we know is that the religious impulse, religion is, if relying solely on the material evidence at hand, maybe 14000 years old. the religious impulse predates homo sapiens. we have religious impulse so the impulse that is this notion, this belief that we are more than just our material selves, that there is

something about us that is eternal, then we'll just use the word soul to talk about that because we all know what were talking about. there is something beyond the material realm. the idea is older than we are as a species. and it's universal. it's an idea that has arisen in every culture, and all parts of the world throughout all time. this creates a bit of an evolutionary puzzle for scientists because if something like that is universal, if it can be traced back to even before species existed then it must be some reason for it. there must be some evolutionary adaptive advantage for this impulse to be so deeply a part of the human condition. for most of the last 200 years

we've been trying to answer what is that advantage. there have been countless answers given. we been told it gives a sense of social cohesion and if you have social cohesion you're more likely serv to survive in groups that don't have that but we know that doesn't work very well because our primitive ancestors created their collective identity not by rallying around the set of abstract symbols but through kinship and blood. that created the adaptive advantage. it solves certain ministries, it helps us to understand the world. that may or may not be true but there is no evidence that that creates an adaptive advantage at all. in fact, for the most part, what most evolutionary scientists have come to recognize about the religious

impulse is that it is an evolutionary does advantage. in terms of the cost of time and resources and energy, all things that are better served trying to survive that if anything the religious impulse in is a disadvantage in our evolution. then the big mystery is why does it exist. if you are a believer, the answer is because it does. it exist because it does. there's a god and god created us and that's who we are and were meant to be the way we are. there is a thing in our brain that forces us to look for the other, the transcendent, the divine, however you want to define it. if you are not a believer, then the best answer that we have come up with is that it's

an accident. but it's an evolutionary byproduct of some other adaptive advantage that arose deep deep in our past. there are a couple of possibilities about what those things are. one of those things is the hyperactive agency detective thing in our brain that arises very early in our evolution that forces us to see agency in natural phenomenon. the best way i can put it is that the aj dd is the reason you think every bump in the night is caused by someone doing the pumping. that's what that is. obviously can see why that has

revolutionary advantages. it's easy to see why someone is bumping and survive and to be wrong and it's fine. the other culprit is something that theorists refer to the theory of mind. that is that thing that snaps on in your brain, sometimes around three in half, four, five months when you start to realize that other beings who look like you feel like you, that other people have the same emotions, same idea, same thoughts that you have. those are both evolutionary adaptations, according to some theorists as an accident or a byproduct that was never intended created this impulse toward belief in and then fill

in the blank. the supernatural or the divine or transcendent or the immaterial or the soul. however you want to talk about it. literally take sides in the argument. i am a believer. i believe in god and so i believe the human condition is designed in such 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, that your empirical senses are not human were to understand the reality of the world. there is a transcendent reality. i happen to believe that but there's no proof either way.

have to say, anyone who tells you they can prove that one way or another is just trying to convert you. you can just ignore them. >> and went 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 eve who notices a tree in the forest with a trunk that has grown into the shape, a shape that resembles the human face and you describe, she transforms the tree into a totem, an object of worship. she may bring it offerings, she may even start praying to it for help in letting her prey, thus religion is born all be it by accident and you explain in the book as you've explained on the stage that this detection device is meant

to detect human agency and hence a human cause behind any unexplained event. what i'm going to ask is isn't it counterrevolutionary to transform the face in the tree trunk which actually exists in the here and now into something otherworldly or to follow your praising, if there's something that goes bump in the night, maybe it's a real material threat and if you dismiss it as a supernatural being you are depriving yourself of a defense against a real threat. >> i think that's just it. what cognitive theorists would say is the device forces you to pay attention to something you would otherwise ignore. the knots on a tree that look like a face. you might just ignore it but

you are evolutionary adaptive to notice it and that's one fight or flight starts so you can react to it in case of the predator. once you realize it's not that's one theory of mine takes over according to these cognitive theorists. here's the thing that's absolutely fascinating. as i said, it's that thing in your cognitive development that makes you realize that someone who looks like you also feels the way you do. it's an empathy device. what's amazing about it is research has shown 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 very young

children. if you give a small child a car, what she will do is imagine the headlights our eyes and the grill is a mouth and the call the car fred. the child knows the car is a hunk of plastic that there's a fundamental difference between the car and mom. they are not the same thing. but because the car exhibits certain human characteristics like a face or like the strongest version of this is bipedal motion, something that exhibits bipedal motion, we just naturally are cognitively attuned to implant on that nonhuman thing human emotions, human motivations, human characteristics, and because the one fundamental thing that we know about ourselves and

this again as part of our evolutionary adaptation is that we have a soul that the concept of the soul is the universal ideal. it's actually a credible researcher named justin just down the road who has done enormous research on this and has discovered that children, regardless of where they are from, regardless of whether they come from religious families or not, that children are born with an innate concept of the belief that body and mind, and you can replace the word mind with soul, you can call it psyche, you can call it buddha nature work she, you can call it whatever you want but we all know what we mean when we say that. that body and mind are separate and distinct. it turns out that's the distinct that we are born with. it's a believe that we have to

unlearn and the reason for that happens to be because of these cognitive processes that are going on. so in this particular case the example that i use is that eve sees a tree, she freezes because she thanks it's a face and turns out it's not a face but now she recognize it has something that looks like a face. she may accentuate that phase or start to give that tree certain human traits because it has certain human characteristic of the most important trait she gives it is a soul or spirit because that's 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, it's a pretty good theory, there's no way of proving it and it's as good a

theory as we are meant to think this way and it's just sort of up to you which one you think makes more sense. >> i would like to frame a question in terms of a public event in a private event. i heard a passenger on the southwest flight where the engine blew up describe how he addressed a prayer to god, we are going to need you to send us some angels now. on that same day, a dear friend of mine during his 13-year-old son who died in a traffic accident. god did not send any angels to save that child. this of course is the fundamental theological puzzle but as i learned for my wife and who is here and a psychotherapist, you might say that both of them were engaging in magical thinking and in the realm of psychology, magical thinking

is dysfunction. do you allow for the fact that religion, or the proposition that religion encourages and incense magical thinking. >> that's a very old and quite common critique of religion. in fact, it goes all the way back to freud and the concept that what religion is is basically a means of alleviating anxiety, the anxiety of the human condition, which by the way is a good reminder that freud knows ship about religion because religion is not an anxiety relieving mechanism. it's an anxiety creating mechanism. that's what it is. but nevertheless, what i am more, what i'm less 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 we cannot help but to fashion the divine to look exactly like us with a head

and arms to be so distinguishing characteristic that sets us apart. maybe it is bigger than we are or has wings or some supernatural powers. it's a human with supernatural powers but that's what it is. only begin writing about it we have no choice but to put the divine in a narrative that would act in a way we would act. when we are in a place of want or worry or existential angst, whether we are believers or

not, when we begin to strive for some kind of supernatural or divine help, when we begin to have that experience of transcendence, whether it's deliberate or involuntary, we have no choice. we really cannot help it but to immediately put ourselves, our own personalities, our own wants and desires and likes and dislikes, everything upon that god can then expect that god to respond to us as if that god were us. and that is basically all of human religion in a nutshell. there is a way to have a deep meaningful, spiritual experience without

personifying although, the fact of the matter of humanizing god allows for a much deeper connection with the divine, obviously. if your god thanks and acts just like you do it creates a pretty close bond between you and god. it allows for deep spiritual experience. the problem, obviously is that that god also carries your prejudices and your biases and everything that is awful about you. you construct a god that has all your good and bad points pretty god that is superhuman with no human limitations, but whicwith human flaws, and that, more than anything else in my opinion, explains why religion has been a force for both good and bad. i think if you dehumanize god,

if you strip god of this personality that you've confronted and think of god less of a divine personality and more as this creative force was that you can tap into that underlies all of creation, that is all of creation, you can have the same kind of spiritual connection but without all that negative baggage that so often comes with belief in god. >> you write in your new book, and i'm quoting, that you choose to believe that there is something beyond the material realm, something real, something knowable. but you also say, and i believe you said here today that faith is a choice. no one knows better than you and let's recall that the

greek word of heresy is. [inaudible] i pointedly say judaism, christianity and islam all insist that any choice but the choice they've made is the radical. do believe true belief is really a deadly enemy of choice. >> true belief maybe is the wrong word for it, but i do think that this unthinking, exclusive claim to truth that you get from fundamentalism is most definitely an enemy of choice. i do truly believe that faith is fundamentally a choice. i think some of us have this argument about whether faith is rational or not. of course it's not rational. it's not supposed to be

rational. it's an emotion. that's what it truly is. it depends on your experiences, your worldview and like all those emotions, it simply can't be explained in these rational ways. you cannot just reason over love. it's an emotion. it doesn't always make sense, it has everything to do with who you are as an individual and yet very few people would demand proof of love. i can easily disprove your love and that's absurd. if you give -- if you have someone in your life like that

you should probably run away. you hear that about faith all the time. partly it has to do with i think, what is an unquestionable fact which is whatever faith is, whatever it is, however you want to define it, it is the result of complex electrochemical reactions in your brain. that's what it is. i don't know why that has to threaten your faith. of course faith exists in your brain. everything exists in your brain. everything. every experience you have ever had, this experience right here is a result of electrochemical relat reactions in your brain so why would faith be any different.

to say that we know the mechanism whereby the faith experience can be had, and therefore the faith experiences no longer legitimate is absurd. we know the exact mechanism whereby the love experience is had. we know that the chemical reaction in your brain. does that delegitimize the emotion? does it devalue the object of your love? of course not. it's all in your brain. because of that people simply say that we don't need take it seriously anymore. if we don't need to take it seriously anymore than we don't need to take any emotion seriously anymore. >> i feel compelled to quibble on one point, and it reflects back on something about love. i would agree that everything we receive we perceive in our

brain but this exists outside our brain or something exists outside our brain. how do you distinguish between that thing that exists outside of perception which can be proven by experiment and nothing that we describe as god which we can never prove. >> the trick is a talk about multiple observers. when i leave this room do you all cease to exist : maybe, i can prove that you don't.

if that's how we prevent, face still works because it has multiple observers. let's get out of this mode. i'm not interested in the question of whether god exists. that's a question that is personal, subjective and a choice. i am interested in what we mean when we say god and more often than not what we mean voice a god is ourselves, a divine version of ourselves and that's what i think is problematic whether you're a believer or no not. >> one of the ironies in your book is that two of the three great monotheism's family condemn and prohibit the depiction of god in any form, human or otherwise uneven christianity had its iconoclast before the protestant reformation and the

protestant reformation strip to the churches of imagery. how do you reconcile the fact that our drive to humanize the deity seems to coexist with three great religions that to 1 degree or another command is not to do that. >> in fact, i think the case of islam is the best example of this. islam has a very strict rule about humanizing god, about thinking of god in human terms. in fact, islam is one of only a very small handful of religions in the history of religion that doesn't explicitly claim that human beings were created in god's image. islam doesn't believe that. part of the reason why is because the concept of god has to be utterly unhuman. whatever god is, it's not human. that's what god is. and yet, even in that

incredibly iconoclastic religion, when you read the koran there are multiple versus in which it talks about god's all seeing eyes and his loving hands and it refers to god in these deeply anti- arctic ways. the proper response would be that it's poetry, obviously were supposed to read it as metaphor, that's 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 toward anti- [inaudible] i should talk about why this is such a big deal. it's not just because we want to see what god looks like but to do so is to limit god and

limiting god -ish the greatest sin of islam. any limit on god. if you think of god in human terms then by definition you are limiting god. if you say god has two hands, will why not three, why not a hundred. why not 10000. why would you only have two hands. and why hands? all of that gets you into this theological problem which is why there this this blanket prohibition on it. the problem is that most muslims, because of the way that islamic authority in the schools of law have sort of codified certain versions of islam, most of read the koran in its figurative sense. from the very beginning you have these great islamic thinkers and theologians who confronted with this massive oxymoron, number one, you are

not allowed to describe god in human terms. number two the koran describes god in human terms. what you supposed to do about that and the answer was, it's none of your business. if it doesn't make sense, just move on. and so, what i find very fascinating about that conflict is that it's really out of that conflict and that the particular branch of islam that i adhere to a rose because there was a group of mystics who said there's a problem here, the central paradox can't continue. we can't at one time say god is fully divine unity and has no human shape or form whatsoever, can't be limited by any means and at the same time we have to read the quran literally when it says that

god has hands, that we can't abide by that. this new religious movement arose out of islam, by the way it wasn't new in a lot of ways. it tapped into jewish mysticism and hindu end catholic mysticism and the scripture and the religion and its authority in a completely new and different way. >> would you agree that christianity provides the proof text for your argument about humanizing god because although theologians speak of the mystery of the trinity, one third of the trinity is god becomes flash. is that an example of the phenomenon you're describing in your book. >> yes, and the mystery of the trinity, the mystery of any faith 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, that you cannot have a unified conception of god that can then divide into other forms and still have a unified conception of god. all 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 three or 400 years of christianity, monotheistic christianity was an outlier, there's two different gods, yahweh and jesus and adjust --

it just doesn't make any sense. that was one of the primary way until the third century in which christianity spread. the problem with christianity go away. the believe that jesus and only jesus is god and i think part of the reason why christianity is the most successful religion in the world and part of the reason why figure will continue to be the most successful religion in the world is because it has allowed us to fully surrender to this cognitive impulse. we are all born with this natural inclination to humanize the divine whether you believe in the divine or not.

atheists do this as much is the most fervent lever does. when you ask an atheist if you believe in god will say no and then you say what you mean by god and they begin to describe themselves. everyone does this. what christianity does is it says do you want to know what god is? do you want to know what this greatest ministry in the universe, do you want to know what god is? imagine the most perfect person. that's god. imagine the most perfectly loving, perfectly kind, perfectly compassionate human being. that's god. that is a profoundly potent way of thinking about something that is beyond human thinking. but it does more than anything else all it allows us, i discarded has scratching a cognitive itch. that's kind the key to it.

and, i think for a lot of people it creates that very deep bond that people want with the divine. if there is a god, but whatever god is, the holy other, how my supposed to know this, it was just a person who lived 2000 years ago and more importantly i can craft that person into anyone that i want that person to be. i can think of jesus as a radical, social reformer to the for the poor and the dispossessed against the powerful and the strong or i can just as easily think of that person as a middle-class small business owner who really hated taxes. why? because that's who i am.

this is the thing. couple years ago you remember when making kelly said, i believe her exact words were it is a fact that both jesus and santa claus were white. let's give that woman her own nbc show. my response, forget about santa claus, but my response to her was yes, she's right, her jesus is white because she's white. if you go to ethiopia, jesus is black. if you go to kyoto, jesus is japanese. if you ever get a chance to go to nazareth, to the church in nazareth, they actually have this incredible display of paintings of jesus sent from all over the world and that's all you need to see is the way in which jesus takes on not

just the characteristics and personality, but literally the race of the person who worships him. the jesus that they have their from thailand is blue because that's the way in which divine supernatural figures in mythology are often expressed. that to me is the true power of christianity. >> one way to describe what's happening in syria is that russia, and eastern orthodox country are supporting a regime against various sunni nations 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 affiliation on all parts is just a veneer and what's really at stake is raw,

global geopolitics. i feel like you have prefigured your answer but my question is which of these two views do you favor? >> was happening in syria is what happens so often in human history, not just in contemporary history, but throughout human history which is that we have chosen to play a game over power and resources on the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. to say that it's about religion or about ethnicity is to betray the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people as a result of the conflict there. 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 there. this is geopolitics at its worst and part of the reason why 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 might've had an answer but i don't have an answer in 2018. that's all i have to say about that. >> and then ask one more question and then we will go to the floor so if you have a question prepared, you might want to get ready to raise your hand and i'll call for questions. my final question is one that 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 and literally in the air in syria is a literal

battle and not merely a surrogate battle between israel and iran. you feel we will see an israel iran war in the middle east? >> no i don't. definitely don't see a hot war between iran and israel because neither side has anything to gain. what i am worried about, however is a war between iran and saudi arabia. i think that's where the true geopolitical line are being divided in that region. unfortunately, with this administration, and with the charade that is underway right now with the new saudi crown prince who is leader in all but name, this man just finished like a week long tour

of the united states. did anybody notice this thing? he was here in hollywood, he had thomas freedman basically worshiping him because he got a nice lamb meal out of it. anyone know what that was all about. he's on the cover of "time" magazine. this man who is responsible for a genocide that is taking place in yemen, who is personal responsible for a genocide in yemen. he just left france a little while ago and president macron, our liberal hero, he said what he sees in mbs is the true spirit of the french revolution. someone smartly said, is it because of the beheadings? is that what you see this connection. saudi arabia, iran is a terrible tyrannical

authoritarian regime that regularly denies the rights of its citizens, oppresses religious minorities, and supports terror groups around the region. true. i got that out of the way. saudi arabia, our best friend, being led by the man who was brought from coast-to-coast in this country and the funding of ridiculous profiles written by these journalists who just basically fell all over themselves around him, saudi arabia is a jacksonian, authoritarian backward kingdom that slaughters its own people, that denied them the basic right, but might very soon allow women to drive, so therefore he is this great reformer all the sudden.

we are being fed lies by the saudi regime 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 real conflict in the middle east is between iran and saudi arabia, that's what's happening in saudi, that's what's happening in syria and lebanon and even in yemen. nevertheless, i think unfortunately this particular administration, in taking such an explicitly pro- saudi line is called would is inflaming the possibility of an actual war between these two countries, not the cold war. i'm not afraid of israel and iran going to war, i'm afraid of iran and saudi arabia going

to wea war. >> we will go to the floor for questions. wait to economic front. >> think you for all of your insight. could you talk a little bit about the irony of unscrupulous individuals throughout history who are affluent, weapon rising the actualization of god, i get the direct probation. >> so that's a really important question because this entire time, mostly what i've been talking about is a religious impulse. this impulse toward the divine, toward transcendence, toward the other, however you want to specify it, but religion itself is a man-made institution, literally. people with penises. maine made institution, and like any man-made institution,

it is fundamentally about authority and power, that's why it exists. the very first temples that we created for the gods were meant to house the gods away from the prying eyes of everyone else. that only the priests could actually enter into these sanctuaries, the priest would direct and watch the gods, they would literally put makeup on the gods and then occasionally they would remove the gods from the home and take them out to everyone else could see them and immediately put them back where they belonged. it's all about who has access to god and so, it shouldn't come as a surprise that for the ten, 12, many years that we can say institutionalized religion exists that has always been wrapped up in power and money and control

and authority, that's what all institutions eventually boil down too. i do think it's important to understand that faith is much bigger than religion. they are not the same thing. religion is a language. it's a language made up of symbols and metaphors that allows a community of faith, of like-minded people to communicate. they can communicate to themselves and to each other this ineffable experience of faith. it's nothing more than that. faith is much bigger, much more mysterious and cannot be contained by anyone language. as long as you recognize that you are much better off knowing the difference between

the man who wears the shiny robes and has all the power and money and the person in the pew there to experience another way of being, another mode of knowing. >> okay. the young lady with the sunglasses. >> i was wondering what draws you specifically to this as opposed to any other religion or branch. >> what i think, there are very specific theological things that draw me too it, but fundamentally, i think the difference between mystics and mystical movements within any religion and the more mainstream orthodox virgin of those religion is that mystics think of religion as a signpost to god.

that what religion does is it points you toward god. it's the path that you take in order to get to god, but mystics are interested in the path, they're interested in the destination. they're not interested in the signpost, they're interested in getting there. they're not interested in knowing about god, they're interested in knowing god by experiencing god directly, and often times what happens is that as a result of that fundamental desire, the way that religion is a shell and you have to break through that shell in order to actually experience god. as a result of that, they tend to reject authority because the authority is the mediator, the person in between you and god and the mystic has interest in the person in between you and god.

they tend to reject law and doctrine, there are dues and don'ts and if you do these things you can get closer to god and if you don't, then you are further from god, mystics have no interest in that kind of idea. the very concept of dualism, right and wrong, good and bad, these are human constructs for they have nothing to do with the divine. also, mystics tend to be interested in a different kind, a different level of scripture. they see scripture as a kind of, almost like a secret code, like a thing to break through, it's more than just the words and the external meeting that there is a hidden internal meaning that allows for the ultimate goal which is to become one with the divine.

the reason i subscribe to this sufi form is because it goes back to the language. it's the language, the metaphors, the symbols that i'm most comfortable with. my favorite quote is something the buddha one said which is if you want to draw water you don't dig 614 well you dig one six-foot well. islam is my six-foot well. what the buddha was trying to say quite clearly is that it doesn't matter which well you choose, the water is the same, but you should choose a well because that helps you actually reach the water. the symbols, the metaphors, the language, it's helpful, it makes a difference, it helps

you put words to your thoughts and your emotions, and especially when you're talking about something as abstract and unknowable as the divine, you need a metaphor for it. pick a metaphor. jesus is a pretty good metaphor. but understand that it's just a metaphor. the different ways in which we talk about god are just nothing more than languages. so don't confuse the language for the thing itself. don't confuse the well for the water. that's what i would say. >> the german in the back in the middle. >> thank you very much. as an alumni and professor, welcome back to our campus. you had a beautiful series of believer on cnn.

it participated in each world practices. what is your single most important lesson that you learn from this? can you encapsulate that in light of what you said. >> thank you for that. i love that question because it has very much to do with exactly what i was a single moment ago. the reason i wanted to do that show is that i wanted to take viewers on an experience, i wanted to show you something that at first glance looked weird and scary and foreign and exotic and so beyond anything you have actually felt or thought whether you're a believer or not. then, hopefully through my immersion into that community, through me acting as a linguist, as kind of a

translator, that i would teach you the language, i would teach you the symbols in the metaphors, and by the end, hopefully you would realize that's not that weird, actually, and i kind of believe something close to that. i think that was the thing i was most proud of, is how often people came up to me and said, i never thought about it that way. i never thought about voodoo in that way. operably the most interesting one was scientology. everybody in this town has an opinion on scientology, but do you actually know what it is? we know obviously the corruption and the abuses of the church, but a religion isn't a church. there are more than a billion catholics. you can't just say oh because of the pedophilia scandal than all those billions of catholics are all somehow

responsible for those crimes. and so, that was the when i thought was very interesting, people had the hardest time with and the hardest time admitting to me that oh, well i guess it's not that weird or it's not any weirder than any other religion. that's the thing. having people sometimes dismiss scientology because they say well it's just, it's all science fiction and my response is, have you read the bible? >> to have time for one more question? the gentleman. [inaudible] >> i was wondering, could you talk about the role of women in connection with god and

also in connection with islam, especially early islam because a lot of times people don't understand the role of women in early islam. : : : kind of came together in the design consoles to make decisions for every one. when those tribes began to coalesce into kingdoms and

empires, so did have them. all of a sudden there was a king of all those that ruled again the others. when we were hunter gatherers and wondering, most were the gods of the sky, the sun and the moon and the rain and stars those are the god that guided us in large part. we outlined very clearly when men were responsible for the majority of the nourishment and prehistoric paleolithic community because women were

primarily gatherers in the vast majority of the food for a community and the men were primarily behind her i the huntt exclusively but primarily. the deities were primarily fatherly and male deities and the structure was patriarchal. we swapped the steers and became an agricultural society and suddenly the earth deities began to matter the most and was very much a scene 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 sudden

dominance of the female deities. but then because once we began to settle for good and those experiments became mass farming and once we decided they need homes so we start building houses for them and carving them and placing them in those houses and suddenly everything changed again and it was the men who once more began to dominate the sort of religion in the male deities started to become prominent once more to the.

it's not about religion or faith, the divine has no gender and faith is genderless. this is about control and we live in primarily societies that are dominated and controlled by men. it's to the male-dominated religious societies this is true of islam, christianity, buddhism, hinduism both to be the most religious traditions.

the women have begun to essentially sees the authority back to themselves so we no longer have to wait for some man to read the scripture for you and tell you what it means to. those women have an opportunity to create actual religious movement from actual churches and mosques and synagogues that preach this uniquely feminine interpretation of the scripture and interpretation that has been woefully i think absent throughout most of religious history.

signing area number one where we will be shortly to find a copy please join me in thanking him for a fabuloufor afabulous conv. [applause]by stephen

watts. it runs an hour.