There is a danger in monotheism, and it's called idolatry. And we know the prophets of Israel were very, very concerned about idolatry, the worship of a human expression of the divine.

I had failed to make a gift of myself to God.

Compassion is not feeling sorry for others. It's not soft. It requires an intellectual effort.

Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity.

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.

Every fundamentalist movement I've studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced at some gut, visceral level that secular liberal society wants to wipe out religion.

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.