I've never met anybody who was helped by being told how wretched, miserable and sinful they are.

The church had to find a way to protect Jesus' perfection so that he could do the work of salvation which, in their frame of reference, only God could do, because God had to come into this world from outside this world to rescue the fallen creation.

So much organized religion, in my opinion, ends up being life-denying.

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.

I don't want a God that would go around killing people's little girls. Neither do I want a God who would kill his own son.

Now, if Mary has an egg cell, then Jesus gets 50 percent of his genetic make up from his mother. And if his mother is a child of Adam, she, too,is fallen so Jesus is not perfect.

[Jew] didn't believe anything good could come out of a Jewish study. So, what has happened is anti-Semitism has cost the Jews their lives and their property. It's also cost the Christians the ability to read the old gospels, which are deeply, deeply Jewish, and to bring that out is a pretty exciting thing. I'm having a wonderful time with that. I'm just not near ready to do much with it.