I thought perhaps it should be recognized that religious people including fundamentalists are quite intelligent many of them are highly educated and they should be treated with complete respect.

The fundamentalists are increasing. People afraid to oppose those fundamentalists shut their mouths. It is really very difficult to make people move against a sensitive issue like religion which is the source of fundamentalism.

Basically fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon. In the same way that Hitler evoked a mythological religion of German purity and the glory of the past the Islamists use religion to evoke emotions and passions in people who have been oppressed for a long time in order to reach their purpose.

I think the real problem for American religion are those minority of fundamentalists who try to identify political policies with religion.

As I have pointed out it is the Christian tradition that is the most fundamental element in Western culture. It lies at the base not only of Western religion but also of Western morals and Western social idealism.

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.

Nevertheless there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is becoming a new dominant ideology if not a religion. Its main weapon is raising the alarm and predicting the human life endangering climate change based on man-made global warming.

There is an absolutely fundamental hostility on the part of totalitarian regimes toward religion.

There are fundamentalist psychopaths in every religion in the world. Every single one.

You have this mounting aggressive ignorance with the rabbit's foot of their particular religion. You don't really have any kind of spiritual law just a kind of a rabid mental illness. The songs are a little slice of life.