Of Beverly Hills to the conversation of the year. We are delighted to be partnering with the bucs to bring them to speak about his newest book god a human history. Before we bring him out, i want to give you a little context about what the conversation is here at the temple emmanuelle. We started the Program Last Year in response to help civic fabric has been tearing and the idea that it has been harder and harder to have conversations with people when we disagree, especially on issues that are important to us. So we were lucky to have the family come forward and to help us formulate the conversation. All of whom have been significant partners helping us shape this event. We are lucky to have them and events like this. You might be wondering what it is but a conversation about god has to do with Difficult Conversations and what i will say is i think that youre good at a lot of things but one of them isnt necessarily the ability to talk about god. We dont often talk about what we do believe for what we dont believe and i would go as far to tell our prayers are in hebrew so that we dont have to think too hard about what it is we are actually saying when we pray. I think its because the whole idea is deeply personal what we believe and what we dont and it feels vulnerable when we have conversations about those deeply held beliefs but i want us to try. So before we bring him out, i want to take 30 seconds to think of a moment in our own lives when you have had a transformative experience. You may or may not use the language of god. If tha that isnt a language tht speaks to you, thats fine but i want you to think of a moment of purpose or connectedness that you have experienced in your life because im going to ask you to share that moment with somebody sitting next to you. Take 30 seconds to think in silence. And when you are ready, make eye contact with somebody sitting next to you or maybe somebody you know or dont. Take 30 seconds to share that experience. [inaudible conversations] if you havent switched for the other person to speak, switch now. [inaudible conversations] go ahead and finish your thought with a sentence and focus your attention back up here because i would imagine maybe that felt like a bit of a risk. Maybe it felt a little uncomfortable or difficult. But we are incredibly lucky that over the next hour and a half, we ar are going to be guided through this conversation by an extraordinary person. An internationally renowned writer, scholar, producer, commentator. And his number one bestselling books last year, the life and times of jesus of nazareth caused a lot of conversation in the public sphere about religion and was translated in a dozen languages around the world. Hes a recipient of the genes choice award and served as a professor at riverside and holds a phd for sociology of religion from santa barbara. Personally, im a fan of the work he has done through the Production Company focused largely on content and topics about the middle east. One of my favorite documentaries was produced by their studios called the square about the early stages of the arab spring. Needless to say, one of the most prolific and important voices on religion in the public sphere so please join me in welcoming doctor reza aslan. [applause] i drive by this temple all the time and its one of the few that ive never actually been inside of. We are delighted to welcome you. We are going to talk for about 45 minutes and then for those of you that are interested in asking a question, you have cards on your chairs and pencils and we will have people coming through to pick up the car. Also you can call me reza. Im like the useless kind of doctor do think can help anyone, so when people say doctor, i get nervous and think what if something goes wrong and people ask me for help and i am no help. Thats fair. Im going to be asking some very personal questions. Okay im ready. [laughter] league of you start off the book discussing your own religious journey in your life and it is an interesting nonlinear journey and i think it gives good context with why you wrote the book. Would you mind sharing with the audience a little bit . I was born in iran. Its basically the way people are culturally religious with the exception of my father. He was a devout atheist. One of those that had a pocket full of jokes. When the revolution happened, i think my father basically thought maybe we should get out for a little while and lay low until things settle down. Obviously they did not settle down and that was 40 years ago. When we came to the United States is is 1979, 1980 at the height of the crisis so it wasnt exactly the best time to be a premium or muslim in america as opposed to now when its fantastic [laughter] everything is great now. I think that kind of pushed us to just strip our lives clean of religion, certainly islam. My mom would occasionally prey and sometimes theprayand sometif the cultures and holidays, but for the most part, back then being muslim was like being from mars and i spent a good part of the 1980s pretending to be mexican. [laughter] which tells you how little i understood america. [laughter] it didnt help at all. I think it was something about my childhood experience that left this lasting impression on me. Despite the fact i grew up in a fairly nonreligious household, i was always fascinated by religion, by spirituality and pathologies and i was looking for a way to kind of express that. When i was 15 i went with some friend to a personal youth camp. I knew it was a youth camp and christian but i didnt know what any of it meant to be honest with you. Thats essentially where i first heard of the story. He died for our sins and anybody that believe in him would never die and would live forever. I never heard anything like that before in my life. I immediately converted to this evangelical brand of christianity and then spend the next four, five, six years preaching the gospel to every one whether they wanted to hear it or not. I comforted my mother. Then i went to college and decided i was going to study religion for a living. I always wanted to be a writer. I dont remember ever wanting to be anything else. There was never another option but i am also an immigrant. When you are an immigran immigro cant tell your parents that you want to be a writer. It doesnt compute. I remember a conversation i had with my mom in which i said think what i want to do is become a writer and her response was who is stopping you from writing . [laughter] you can go and be a doctor and then you can write, nobody is stopping you. So i thought i will be in academic. I had the experience thats pretty mucthat prettymuch everyo to college when you suddenly realize that everything you thought you knew was wrong. Every assumption you have become everything you learned up to that moment. But i was still looking for some way of continuing to study religion. They are in trouble they are troublemakers. Why dont you explore that and i knew nothing, nothing about islam at all so i began to study islam and dove into the way in which it defines god which is the opposite way that christianity defines god. It essentially says that if you want to know what god is, imagine the most perfect human being, thats god. And that just stopped working for me after a while. What i was looking for was a different metaphor and the metaphor that i found was the concept of divine unity and this notion that everything is god and then there cant be any separation between the creator and creation and i thought yes, that works for me. I also had an emotional conversion and intellectual conversion to islam but i do want to Say Something that is very important and i should get it out at the beginning because it comes out anyway when you study the religions of the world it becomes very difficult to take any one of those religions all that seriously and becomes very difficult to take a truth claim of any one of those religions because these are essentially different languages for the same emotion and sentiment and so what im interested in is the emotion and sentiment but its how one expresses it to me is irreleva irrelevant. So its both being a believer and a scholar of religion. When i pick up a book i am expecting one of two things, either a religious apologist telling me body and how i should believe in god or an atheist telling me that its all baloney and absolutely ridiculous. You had an interesting quote at the beginning but says i have no interest to prove the existence or the nonexistence based on the choice. What was it like for you walking the line as a believer and a scholar did you feel your self getting pulled . I should mention that is unusual in the field of religious studies. Most people go into the field of academic religion. Those that are going there in order to become ministers of one sort or another. Most people that enter the field of religious studies do so from a religious background. It is rare that with no religious instruction at all because ive been going to spend my life studying the religion of the world doe that does not hapn that often. For those of us that do often we come at it thats how we enter it. When you start studying religion from a historical and literary cultural social logical perspective. This perspective is how you were introduced as a set of doctrines and beliefs what happens is that your personal faith starts to crumble because so often and this is true of their faith is in the religion not what the religion points them to so when cracks start to appear in the truth claims of this religion, the whole edifice crumbles. I often think to myself had i been a more progressive christianity i would still be christian today, but i converted to christianity that is predicated on the literal bible like that is the foundation of the fundamentalist evangelical christianity that it is literally true and it is absolutely without error. It takes about five minutes to realize it is full of adverse as it should be when you consider the text that was compiled by dozens of hands over the years and they do not in any way diminish the defined value of the text, not at all and its ludicrous to think that the claims are predicated on whether the facts are correct or not but that is the religion that i was told. When i discovered that was incorrect, the whole thing crumbled because my faith wasnt in god is just this religion. Without taking away the rationale for us reading it can you walk us through this trajectory of the evolution of Human Experience and this dichotomy that you pointed out between the dehumanized notion of god. The basic argument of the book is that you can look at the entirety of the human spirituality going back to the evolutionary past to the origins of the religious experience of two today you can look at the entire process as one long connected ever evolving and remarkably cohesive attempt to make sense of the divine by humanizing the design and human personalities and motivations and by essentially transforming god into a human of course i dove into the person who becomes literally a human being. Whether we like it or not we do not have much choice in the matter. It is an impulse we do it without thinking about it. When you tell an atheist okay fine you dont believe in god, then describe what you mean by god. Its interesting he always says to people i dont believe in the god that you dont believe in. The question of does god exist or do you believe or not, we all assume we mean the same thing. Its so funny how we dont actually bother to think about the fact that this word of it is the most variable in all of the languaglanguages when we simply. Obviously you mean the same thing that i do but even with atheists, they do this thing we can talk about the reasons we do it and have a conversation about what it is that compels us to do that and why and we could also talk at length about what to do about it but i want to emphasize this is not a good thing, it isnt a positive thing to humanize because while it is true what it does when you construct one who acts and feels and acts just like you do it allows you to have a relationship to actually commune in that divine version of your self, but what it also does is that it infuses it and create a god who becomes nothing more than a mere reflecting back to you your own ideas, the things you love and of the things you hate and that is extraordinarily dangerous. I love that video that you did, god doesnt hate gay people, you hate gay people. Religion has done a lot of good in the world and a lot of bad in the world and i think that there is a dichotomy in this conversation that we have that religion is a good thing or bad thing and the reason it is both of those things if they are nothing more than the reflection that is good or bad about us. Then we construct a religion of ourselves and then we wonder why our religious institutions are so flawed it because they are human inventions. At the very least we can get people to be aware of that cognitive impulse. The metaphor of language if you think about religion as a tool in a language that can be used for evil you are not going to get rid of language you have to grapple with religion as though it were a language and. I preached this constantly they are not the same thing. It is mysterious, individual, it isnt a rational thing, it is experiential. That is the best way for me to describe what it is, its an emotion like anything else and our emotion are not rational things, they are based on our experiences and connections with each other, we are, how we define ourselves. They are mysterious things, but we need a way to express this set of symbols and metaphors we can communicate to ourselves and what kind of people and there are throughout the world a set of languages already you can if you so choose, you dont have to, but if you choose to find one of those that resonates with you and use it to communicate the experience and all connections with other people that have the same emotions. If ruffled a few feathers. Some in the Christian Community had to critique it and ignoring the fact finishing islam as well some took issue contextualizing that is about the sensitivity that religion has and it can get very upsetting. With this book have you happened upon any sensitivities that have been surprising or have there been points of interest people have emotionally connected to . I feel like ive had enough time to process the response and i can make certain conclusions about and one of them is that the negative response to the book didnt come from christians or even conservative christians actually, part of the reason it was such a big seller is because many bought it and discussed it in their churches. But negative reaction came from one particular group of christians and that was the rightwing christians who in many ways have the sam had the y is the mainstream of different politics and this is important to understand not just the context about what happened in the book that helped us understand what was going on right now. They are recognizing jesus as a poor jewish peasant from the back roads of galilee whose entire message was predicated on the contrary it on the reversal of the social order. They didnt say the rich and the poor should come together and hold hands. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. Those that are wealthy now will become poor. Those who are fed will become hungry. Those who rejoice will reap. It was an extraordinarily radical revolutionary idea in jesus time and still is today. The problem is that jesus has been detained by most christians would rather think of jesus as a middleclass Business Owner who really hated taxes. Im not making this up, that is literally his book. [laughter] that to be was fascinating to see that. We are seeing precisely the Political Division within american christianity that exerts itself in the phenomena and now with roy moore in alabama being openly offended by christians who are shrugging off pedophili[inaudible] i got a glimpse of that years ago and then i think for a large part of why people respond the way they tend to respond to my books is not because of the according controversy i promise not controversy, im not avoiding controversy, but its for the purpose use it. You said. I think we have to understand that religion, regardless of where in the world youre talking about. It is far more a matter of identity than it is a matter of beliefs and practices. That is not to say that the beliefs and practices dont matter. Of course they do but when someone says i am a jew, muslim, hindu, buddhist, they are making first and foremost an Identity Statement about who they are, how they understand their place in the world, how they define their relationship with other people. Its not just these are the things i do and these are the things i believe. So, when someone feels as though some aspect of their religion is being criticized event without a negative intention, it is the fact that their identity is suddenly under siege so its not just jesus didnt want you to drive a really nice car instead of arguing about the text and theology as some people feel i am attacking who they are as a human being but it comes with the territory and strangely, i kind of mentioned this backstage i havent had that with this y yet. It could deteriorate very quickly but so far i think its because when i started telling people what the is about usually what happens is people start to go yeah like i guess i do do that and that is a thing. It takes them off guard a little bit. Seeing how this is going to go you do have note cards you can write your questions on and we have folks that are starting to go around and gather so take a moment we only have a few more moments where we will begin conversations before the end. You described a little bit about this perspective on god and towards the end you bring back your own experience and how you arrived at the notion that islam so i am going to weigh in a little bit on what that is and you rightfully point out there are threats of this from other religions. Im going to put you on the spot and ask you to speak about the tradition. At the end of the book i essentially make a argument for the view of god that is dehumanized and not a divine personality who is essentially the animating force of the entire universe and i do talk about how this was. The whole first three chapters are about the divine and i make an argument about how that is actually the original way in which the idea of god was understood as the Creative Force of the universe itself and we have a term for that it is a new word about an old idea that just basically means all is god and god is all and as the belief we were describing earlier that there can be no division between creator and creation, that they are fundamentally the same thing and what we think of as the universe is nothing more than the selfexpression of the divine. First i should say the reason i make the argument is first and foremost it provides a deeper spirituality in mind in my view a more Spiritual Connection van thinking in these personality terms i think it is greater connections between different religions and people and i think it could lead to a better world if you see god in every human being it becomes impossible to denigrate or the value. You can add abuse or exploit nature and it is a recipe for a deeper and more peaceful and forwardlooking spirituality and it exists in all religions and stronger form [inaudible] why am i telling you this, you all know this. So the notion again starts with a fundamental problem at the heart. I should mention this very new idea in the hundreds of thousands of years we can trace human spirituality and the concept that there is only one god barely 3000yearsold and by the way, i know i should say its not that it couldnt arise just people didnt bring up the possibility. There were numerous religious reformers who did propose a system that was rejected by a wonderfully so and the reason was while we as human being are perfectly comfortable with contradictory and conflicts and attributes within ourselves, we are not so comfortable with contradictory contacting attitude in god. So we are much more comfortable having a different path for each one of our attributes and a father deity and mother deity. We want all these things spread out. When someone is a says all of those exist in a single god, the ancient mind doesnt get it. Why would one be good and evil, white with one god be responsible for darkness and light . It just doesnt compute. So, one of the many conflicts that arose when it started to stick if you will, was hold on a second how do we explain creations if god created the world what did he create the world from if not from himself and if he created the world from himself, doesnt apply only to the nature of god as indivisib indivisible. So however you define all of this it is inextricable from g god. Ththough way of explaining thise claimed to be co claimed the term that means contract should and what he said is that he contracted his infinite life and made conceptual space for the creation to arrive. Philosophers have a different word for that instead of pantheism is to show the difference of the ideas that god is the universe and is above the universe but its just another form of pantheism. It exists in this tradition and exists in philosophy. The term is not just a religious term, it is a philosophical term. The great philosopher was one of the first to talk about this notion in the concept of the preservation of energy and matter that whatever exists now has always existed and always will as long as the universe exists. That is a scientific fact. It was all his min always mind r consciousness but those are just words for the same idea. What i want to do with this book is on usual its not like the others that ive written a. It would be cool if other people believed it, too. But that is what i want to do. They accused me of wanting to start my own religion and said give him ten years and he will be wearing a turban and flying his own private jet. That doesnt sound too bad actually. A lot of the acts in your career lead you to interview people that identify as religious. I want to know when you have those encounters with our view of most curious about and are there is there anything you want to ask me . What ive noticed in the conversations i have with religious people its usually twofold. The metaphor they used to express their religion is ultimately what seems to me a very similar experience the questions they ask, the way they ask them its like hearing someone suddenly speak french or german and you need a translator and someone to tell you what is speaking sad. So that is the first thing i noticed in the second thing i noticed as they almost always confuse the metaphor for the thing itself. The response is often its not the same thing because your metaphor is different than my metaphor thats not the same thing. I noticed via spiritual conversations that i had that arenthemost rewarding often are they refer to themselves as the nonaffiliated. Its a way of saying im spiritual but not religious. Its the spirituality for decades but had to actually come up with this new category on me about ten years ago because the fact a lot of people were turning in their questionnaires blank and refusing to choose which category even though there was a category on the list and another that says agnostic and they would say none of this matches what i am and so they have to come up with a new category and was titled bond affiliated not affiliated. Its the Fastest Growing label and partially has to do with religion in america and i do not think it is a coincidence that those two things have risen in tandem with each other but i find that they are the most rewarding to speak to for this reason because the metaphors dont get in the way. Im not going to be able to get to all of these, but i come at this in a similar way that you do and one of the struggles that i have in understanding this deep connectedness removing the emphasis on their record and punishment is this big looming question of reality and it seems to believ leave the morality ine hands of us as very imperfect beings. How do you fit that into the conversation on religion . It makes it that much harder to form a personal relationship with them and have that conversation like you are just like me, god is not just like you. Then the second thing is just exactly that. If god isnt punishing my ms. P. And rewarding then why should i even have a good deeds or misdeeds . Often times the people that ask this question tend to be very conservative religious people be they devout christians or overture orthodox jews, those are the people bu that most oftn tripped over this notion. More than anything it just depresses me to think that your moral behavior towards other people and it towards your world is predicated on getting a reward at the end of this thing like you get a lollipop for not crying while getting a haircut. At the same time, i get it into part of my argument is that like i was saying a little bit before, if you remove the aspect and instead infuse everything with the divine, then it still prohibits you if you are a devout belief or it prohibits you from acting in morally because doing so is acting in in morally towards god so instead of thinking of it as a prize you get when its all over, instead, think about the sexual relationship with god. And i get it but its a different way of thinking that that is why i think it is a deeper spirituality. Its the closest experience ive ever had was my third year of school asking a time they give us this idea that the command comes through and it was just a moment because i never related to this and its there for wisdom but it didnt come with that sense of the reward and punishment and these are the things you have to follow, but this idea you have a claim over me and that is just something. I have a lot of these. Im going to ask you this rapidfire. Do you plan to take this book to speak to the red states . Do you suggest to 62 of americans who dont know a muslim. I think it is higher than that but yes i am traveling the end tire country. I just came from georgia and im off to texas. People ask me all the time about the audiences that i to and for the most part, to be honest i dont think about it because im not a detail guy and they say youre in alabama tomorrow and then im not clever enough to think of something new to say so i will say the same thing over and over again. Theres no question about that but the one thing is i take faith seriously, i dont denigrate peoples space. Its the foundation of who i am. Im okay with the different languages that people bombard me with and im perfectly fine meeting them where they are. It doesnt bother me. The next question might not be a more generic spiritual . That is a good question. I think it is a very rare thing going back to the study done that they are of no religious identity that they are spiritual and when they are forced to describe the spirituality immediately they revert to the comfortable metaphors and symbols. So you immediately revert to the metaphors that could have been taught and grew up in. I chose my metaphors and i chose been a cause it goes back to something that buddha said if you want to strike water you dont dig a 6foot wells but my point is it was made very clear no matter what you are using, the water is the same. Have you had a religious experience in building a state of consciousness and if so, could you share a few words about its . I had a few in my life. I had a number in my christian years. Particularly in my christianity its very cosmic its good versus evil and light versus darkness that there is a spiritual battle and the things we do have cosmic consequences and that mindset for certain metaphysical ex periods that are very real. I think as i have gotten older. I once said that my family is my church and i mean that. First i nee mean that quite moderately. It is where i feel closest to god and how that is being defined. They are pointing to this idea of pay cherokee or hierarchy into those structures being particularly linked some going to slow tha this connectin down for you to comment on. Let me take you on a very brief history, very brief. When we were hunter gatherers, primarily our gods were the gods of this guide because what was important in that fight was geography, landscapecomes with a wa, so the waythat we understoor connection was through those aspects of nature that helped the hunt and so most of those were male with exception to a female deity, but the sun is most definitely a male deity, the sky, thunder, lightning, these are male deities. When we transition into agriculture interestingly enough, our focus went from the sky to the earth and is associated with female deity. We planned scenes and it sprou sprouts. We live off of it, the fertility of women but then something very interesting happened with agriculture came the rise of civilization and with civilization came the creation of organized religion that wasnt stable or static it was in a Constant Movement that when we stopped moving and settled down and began to plant fields and villages and cities, we also had temples. So heres the thing the second you build Something Like that, you need someone to administer it. The idea of the intermediary almost always fell to men. There were exceptions particularly when you have very powerful goddesses, those kind were extraordinarily powerful and have women in charge of them but even that was a patriarchal thing because the idea was the goddess is a womans which requires women to take care of her but the other gods are all just maledominated civet is a process whereby once we start to see is the creation of organized religion almost immediately becomes a patriarchal thing and that just extends for the next. Its a broken chain going back to the civilizations i of the first temple that we built. Did you think that the running back and of the tendency of some one starts to shift . Most definitely because it is not coincidence that particularly once we start morphing into the systems but its always conceived of in male terms of the if you think of it as the essence that he or she, yes it fosters less patriarchal concern over religious institutions. We may still like to exclude these relationships not because we hate gay people those that believe in scripture when it comes to issues of hamas at homosexuality also at they take their children to the outskirts of town to stone them t to do ts if you do that, then i accept your interpretation. Thats how selective we are when it comes to what parts of the scripture we choose to leave and a metaphorical context thats how they did it then when they disobey us. Historical context there is not here. If youre going to pick and choose, fine. We all pick and choose but just admit that you are picking and choosing. Does god love kevin spacey . [laughter] i am going to take a hard pass on that question in case anybody is recording anything and whatever i say will come out. [laughter] i think this one is more personally to you as muslim scholar speak to i am going to be an academic here and defined the term. We cant say god until the defined term, cant say reformation until you defined the nation. It is an isnt what you think i. I think because we live in protestant america, we have a skewed view of reformation which is a universal phenomenon that takes place in all religious traditions when institutions and individuals begin to fight over who has the authority to define their feet and scripture. The jewish reformation is what we refer to as judaism. The process whereby the authority for the meaning and message of the jewish faith was wrested from the priests by scholars and individuals, rabbis who wanted to interpret the faith on their own. That process was accelerated by the destruction of the temple but thats what it means. The christian reformation wasnt between catholic and transitions in protestant reform and the protestants won. One. Thats not what happened. This was an argument between the institution in this case and individuals over which one of them gets to design debate codifying the fate and the result of that argument was violence, often catastrophically so. The christian reformation resulted in the death of half the population of germany alone. The islamic reformation has been going on for more than almost 100 years now, and youre just not paying attention to it. I think people look at the violence taking place in large parts of the muslim world and say you know what they need is a reformation. The violence is the reformation. Youre watching it before your very eyes. This dramatic global fight over who gets to interpret this thi thing. Those who maintain the last 1400 years and at the iron grip over the meaning and message of those that can read and have access to the quran. Or is it going to be individua individuals. Its the interpretation of the sacred texts that rests in the hands of the individuals involved institutions. Peace and tolerance and pluralism. I dont want to sound heretical but probably one of the most significant leaders of the reformation and the man we will probably look out 100 years from now as playing a pivotal role in the reformation is osama bin laden. The argument which was so profoundly popular and you read this in the writing all the time stop going to mosques, stop listening and ignore the saudi clerics. They have nothing for you instead examine the text for yourself and you will see that it compels you to act in these certain ways and it was by setting himself up with an alternative source of authority despite the fact that he didnt have a single day of instruction in the islam he has no degrees in it, never studied islam or the islamic law but thats where his power came from. In fact, the argument was even more sustained than that, but it doesnt matter what they have to say. The very fact that they say it from a position negates the position altogether and thats why the leaders of his movements were doctors and sociologists. They were not enough was they were scholars or religious leaders, thats what they wanted and again if you understand what the argument is and whats at stake then suddenly things become clear. Stop talking about a reformation and stop recognizing the reformation that you are living through. I got a couple questions he here. Its about their relationships religiosity and what that implies on the religion. We are a secularized country in the United States and secularism is an ideology that says it has no place. Secularization is the place whereby it rests with the Civic Leaders and not religious leaders. Thats the whole idea of the separation of church and state and the antiestablishment clause that we do not allow for the religious leaders to have political authority. The reason i make that distinction is thedistinction ie people think that its a necessity for the modern society, but its a necessity for democracy and thats not true at all. You can be a religious country and still be democratic as long as you maintain adherence to the principles of the democracy chief among them is the equal rights for all people regardless of their faith or race or ethnicity or gender, but the idea that the law and value of the nation can be predicated on the religious morality is called america, thats what we do here. What i would say is i think as they start to become a greater force in society, funny story. Last week the very first elected federal representative in history came out as a mom and acted like he was coming out of the closet or Something Like a representative congressman i am not sure that i believe in god and that was like the Washington Post wrote an article about it, thats the kind of country that we are. So i think as they become a greater social and political force, what youre going to see is less of a specific religious influences on society but i dont think that youre going to suddenly see the kind of secularism that we see in countries like france or countries like egypt and yes egypt is a secular country in which religious expressions in the political realm are responding to with profound violence. If you were running for president in america and you stand up in front of thousands of people and say as Mike Huckabee famously said when he was running for president then as president i will change the constitution so that it is in better alignment with the bible [laughter] you know what we say okay lets vote on whether we agree with that or not. If you are a politician in egypt and stand up in front of thousands of people and say i want to change the constitution so its in better alignment you will never be heard from again. He will simply disappear and no one will see you again so yes it is a secular country. What is the best way to make people cognizant of the fact and the dangers of doing so and do you think the desire will grow stronger with our advances in science and technology or diminish . The first part i already said as we asked someone to describe god just ask them and say do you believe in god or not, just help me to describe what you mean by god and then point out to them its basically everything they said its just a description of a really powerful human being and a rack ignites at themselves and then secondly, i think the opposite. I think i think and ive writtea little bit about this but its something i firmly believe. I think often times in our conversations we tend to believe that these are diametrically opposed things that are diverging from each other, first of all they are not diametrically opposed, in many ways they are just sort of two different modes of knowing and ways of approaching the fundamental questions of reality and existence and they dont need to be in conflict with each other the other is the slow convergence of religion. In many ways can science begins to ask fundamental questions about the nature of reality, not just about the walls of physics but the concept such as the consciousness and sort of issues like we were talking about, the more they start to use language that at least to me sounds like something mythic in the way they talk about these ideas and so probably what we are going to see is a time in the nottoodistant future in which these two things science and religion increasingly begin to use the same kinds of terms and language and for those of you that think itll just continue to make discoveries and with each one, it will go away i dont think that you really understand religion. When we discovered that the earth was not the center of the universe its not like christianity went away or like the pope was like my dad, never mind. [laughter] they just absorbed the information and moved on. If aliens suddenly show up from some distant planet and walkouts like take me to your leader, first of all we would say no you dont want to meet our leader, trust us. [laughter] its better if its just like this and then secondly, we would simply absorb that information in the religion and move on. Scientific discoveries do not diminish religion. Religion just absorbs the discoveries and keeps going. So i think honestly thats where i would say we are headed towards the convergence of these two things. In the future religion is going to look a whole lot more like science than we think it will and science will look awful lot more like religion. In your book you say theres no evidence moses ever existed. If he didnt exist, why was the concept of his character created and im going to add on to this question can you speak a little bit about the nature of scripture and how it incorporates some of these things dont have evidence or facts behind them and how do they come into being . I dont say that there is no evidence he ever existed. When you talk about that far back in history, the idea that you could actually pinpoint the existence of an individual is impossible. There is no evidence jesus existed and thats almost a thousand years later so i think its important to understand we are not talking about individuals, we are talking about certain narratives and yes it is true theres never been any archaeological evidence to show the existence of israelites in egypt or the existence of a massive exodus of israelites across the sinai. That doesnt mean we wont find something one day, but we just havent found any and there has bee been a lot of looking au can imagine. We just havent found any. But i think you bring up a much more important point here, when we touched on slightly and that is this idea of scripture being understood as either truth or fact. We as products of the scientific age have been taught that which is true is that which can be factually verified and so we want the same idea of truth from our scriptures without recognizing that the people that compose these scriptures have a completely different understanding of the concept of truth but for them in fact were two totally Different Things and that the facts of a story is far less important than the truth that is conveyed and i think again we would be better off to have a more meaningful spirituality that would be reading the scripture in the way that it was intended if we also understood that truth and fact are two Different Things and that if we read our scriptures more interested in truth than we are in fact. With the scripture of reginald and the literalist. Thats good. Im actually going to steal that. Youre welcome. The dalai lama wrote it is disbelieved beyond religion to a belief in a secular extra morality. Is this what you have concluded as well or are you on a pathway to that . If i want to describe my ethics and morality i think i would describe it in the same way that they are not predicated on what i think god does or does not want me to do to my fellow human beings and creation. They are predicated on this idea that i have certain responsibilities to b the occasn and my fellow human beings that they have come from the idea that i do see the divine in them but i dont necessarily need to see that in order to understand that there are proper, moral ethic ways and behaving in the world that lessen suffering and pain and violence and all that. Its a good thing in and of itself. I do think what is really fascinating about the dalai lama and that he has been talking recently and this is perhaps for another time, so i wont get too deep into it, its that he is preparing the world buddhists not just those in tibet but those around the world for essentially the end of this religion and its an extraordinary thing to watch. Those of you who are unfamiliar with what im talking about, the dalai lama has announced that he will not be reincarnating, he will not be reincarnating. There will be no dalai lama after him and just so we are on the same page here, the dalai lama is the reincarnation [inaudible] but is in nyc and being who thousands of years ago decided rather than getting off the wheel of rebirth even though she addehad the ability to do so she would continue to reincarnate over and over again until she finally provided that same nirvana to all of humanity. The politics of the situation in which china has said that it will decide who the next dalai lama is and its actually demanded that the dalai lama reincarnate. [laughter] officially demand. And the response to that has been to say no, but this is it. Im essentially going to go. Im going to go to nirvana and leave you all behind. I know im honestly, people like me who live for this kind of stuff are just like we dont know how to process this. Religions die all the time. They dont intentionally died because the divine figures has iits all over, everybody. Go back to your homes. Its all over. [laughter] but it has caused this real conflict in the heart o of tiben buddhism. Many are rejecting not just his statement but now rejecting the dalai lama. Even you fear they are being led by his younger brother which is so fantastic that its also a family thing. To me i see things like that and think this is why its also fascinating. Religion isnt just about the things that a person believes. It has these profound social, political and even global aspects to it and part of the reason we do need to be religiously literate and i do the kind of things i do is you cant avoid it, you cant avoid religion, you need to be aware of it because it will help you navigate the craziness that is the world we live in. What a wonderful note to end on and i will just say i am a rabbi and i do religion for a living. [laughter] i havent gotten to talk about god this much i think in the last five years in one sitting. It is a joy and i think sometimes our Community Needs a catalyst to have the opportunity to reflect on ourselves. I want to thank you and i think we all want to. [applause] it is a great honor to be here. Thank you. For those of you that do have books, reza will be in the chapel until 9 15 sharp and we have some cookies and tea to enjoy. Thank you for coming. [inaudible conversations] steve bannon is interviewed by me gomer of texas. Hello, im thrilled to be here today with keith, author of abandon, always the rebel. And its great to have you here on cspan