If we could view Muhammad as we do any other important historical figure we would surely consider him to be one of the greatest geniuses the world has known.

There are some forms of religion that are bad, just as there's bad cooking or bad art or bad sex, you have bad religion too.

A science can diagnose a cancer and can even find a cure for it, but it can't, and a scientist will be the first to say, it's can't help you to deal with the stress and disappointment and terror that comes with a diagnosis, and nor can it help you to die well, like Socrates, kindly, not railing against faith, but in possession of your own death. For these imponderable questions people have turned to mythos.

Surely it's better to love others, however messy and imperfect the involvement, than to allow one's capacity for love to harden.

I am continually trying to find meaning in the world. If we cannot find some ultimate significance or value in our lives, we fall very easily into despair.

The first person to promulgate the Golden Rule, which was the bedrock of this empathic spirituality, was Confucius 500 years before Christ.

Huge imbalance in power has resulted in the alienation, rage, fury, and awful amoral terrorism that has erupted and is erupting at the present time. And in order to counter this, we need to make the compassionate voice of religion and morality a dynamic force in our world.