I think one of the things we've got to look out for is human beings claiming that they know how God operates.

The biblical texts that we Christians have used for centuries to justify our hostility toward the Jews need to be banished forever from the sacred writings of the Christian church.

I think the worst way to go is to have somebody think they speak for God. If you look at history, every nation that has operated as if it spoke for God has become violently destructive.

I think human beings are almost, by definition, religious people,in the sense that we ask questions of meaning, we anticipate future events, we deal with the issues of mortality from the first time we see a dead bird as a little child.

That's why the virgin birth never gets rid of the human mother. The story only gets rid of the human father. So Jesus' life was the life of God nurtured through the Virgin Mary. That's because the virgin birth died as a literal story as soon as we discovered that women had an egg cell. It's interesting to watch what the Roman church did about that.

Terrorism is a real despair. These are people for whom life has been so negative that they're willing to die if they can take down some of their enemies.

When the dust settles and the pages of history are written, it will not be the angry defenders of intolerance who have made the difference. The reward will go to those who dared to step outside the safety of their privacy in order to expose and rout the prevailing prejudices.