We are more thoroughly an enlightened people with respect to our political interests than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information.

There is a great interest in comparative religion and a desire to understand faiths other than our own and even to experiment with exotic cults.

The restriction of religion to private life therefore does not necessarily threaten the vital interests of the majority religion if there is one and it protects minority religions from tyranny of the majority.

I don't practise any religion but I am deeply interested in the answers that mankind has come up with to explain the human situation.

I have a certain pool of subject matter that I like to write about things that interest me: politics religion ecology and relationships between men and women. And that's usually what I focus on.

Religion is interesting because it brings out the best and the worst in humanity. It can be a source of good deeds whether it's people from different spiritual backgrounds coming together to help other people in need after a crisis. But it's also a cause for war and bloodshed.

I almost got a psychology degree I almost got a philosophy degree. I kept changing it so they couldn't make me graduate. I studied anthropology and eastern religion epistomology and astronomy... I took every interesting course I could find for nine years.

I found it interesting that as people become more technically oriented all over the world at the same time people are becoming increasingly spiritual. The success of the Da Vinci code - even though it was a great yawn - also showed people's interest in religion.

I am fascinated with religion or things that people believe in and question that. I think it's interesting.

You can't write about the past and ignore religion. It was such a fundamental mind-shaping driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested in what religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence.