I live on the other side of Charles Darwin and I can no longer see human light as having been created perfect and falling into sin, I see us rather emerging into higher and higher levels of consciousness and higher and higher levels of complication.

I grew up in North Carolina being told that the Bible approves slavery and segregation, that it was the will of God.

The Bible was written between 3,000 and 2,000 years ago, and it's filled with the knowledge that people had in that period of time, some of which you and I rejected long ago. The Bible says that women are property, that homosexuals ought to be put to death, that anybody who worships a false God ought to be executed, that a child that talks back to his parents ought to be stoned at the gates of the city. Those ideas are absurd.

There are some great values in Christianity, but I think the values are located more deeply in our humanity than they are in our religion. There are certainly some survival values.

Religion is a mixed blessing.

It's almost inevitable that we become religious people. The question is, what kind of religion is it?

The Sins of Scripture is an interesting title; most people don't put sins and scripture together in the same title. It jars people.