 John, would you say, if putting the philosophy aside for a moment, historically speaking, wouldn't you say that it's true that whereas secular states may establish freedom of religion, religious states are not likely to establish freedom of secularism? Yes, I do. I mean, I'm an advocate. In fact, look, I think the secularization is, I mean, sorry, the process of the separation of church and sect begins within religion itself. It begins, I mean, it gets a massive move forward in the 16th, well, because of the whole issue of the religious wars of Europe is one part of in the 16th century, where you suddenly have this situation that had not existed previously in which peoples are being pulled apart. I mean, peoples who otherwise were of commonality by the fact that, you know, in this territory there's a prince here, and of course the people were forced to follow the religion of the prince. So this is where you begin to get the evolution of this idea that what religion people follow should not be, as it were, in accord with what political regime obtains. Now, that, of course, that lesson can be learned not only in the context of religion, but in the political sphere as well. And I think, again, one of the things that I think is a slight terror, I mean, look, in the last month, as you know, in the United States, and I suppose to some extent this has been covered here, we've seen eruptions of intolerance on university campuses, right? And what we've seen is a kind of new fascism, right? The language now is, we must create a safe space. And a safe space is one in which nothing can be contested, right? Now, it seems to be that is a kind of new theocracy, right? It's a new attempt to try to define a space within which an ideology, which will actually cover every aspect of things. Well, by calling it a new theocracy, you're making a very damning admission. No, no, I'm an anti-theocrat. No, no, it would be a damning admission if I were myself an advocate of theocracy, I'm a critic of theocracy, yeah. I would like to ask you, Michael, why is it that you have so much faith in science and technology to make our world a more civilized world? Well, it's not faith, it's confidence in the fact that it's done so well so far. So for example, secular states really do do better than more religious states. You just take the rates of religiosity, church attendance, belief in God across the top 20 industrialized nations. But that's secular. And the more and the more religiosity you have in a country, the worse it does. And by worse, I mean STD rates, abortion rates, crime rates, homicide rates, and so on. The secular states of Northern Europe are the safest places. They have the lowest teen pregnancy rates. They have the lowest homicide rates. America, we are the most religious of the top 20 industrialized Western nations. And we have the highest rates of these social ills. Come on, I mean, correlation causation. Well, I mean, I'm not saying religion causes, homicides, or abortion. What I'm saying is that theists and conservative Christians argue in America that we need religion to keep people in check, to keep their moral values safe and so forth. I'm a secular person. But actually, I think the evidence shows that by many different measures, of course, terrible things have done in the name of the religion. I don't deny that for a second. No, I'm just saying it doesn't work. But you've had a chance to talk. OK. But it's also true that if you look at data, religion, at least in the United States, people who are more religious, this is a secular person speaking, people who are more religious, controlling for many other things, are in fact nicer. They're more likely to help old ladies across the street. They're more likely to give to charity, including secular charities. They're more likely to worry about underprivileged people than other people are. So let's, I'm paring countries. Sorry, can I just finish my sentence? I don't like to have a discussion about this issue of the role of religion in which we have, it's either religion is the great evil in the world or religion is the great good in the world. The fact is, empirically, there are some good, I'm not even sure it's a wash, but there are some good things about religion. And in this argument, I'm going to try to defend that side, because if I were in a different group of all theologues, I'd be saying, oh, actually, religion can do some bad things. But I'm trying to get a little bit of a balance of a matter. On balance, countries, I'm doing cross-country comparison, not within a country comparison. It's on balance, but it doesn't say a thing about what's causing that. But Michael, go back to science and technology, because I still... Yeah. Okay, well, so that the idea that from the enlightenment that we can reason our way to certain concepts that work better than others like rights, expanding civil rights and civil liberties to more people is better for a society. It makes it more prosperous. There's more freedom. There's more justice and so on. That was invented in the Enlightenment, essentially. It's not true. It's also not true. We had an earlier frame here in which we had the good reason and the bad passion. That's a classic trope from Western history. That's simply not true. Let me give you one specific example. People all over the world were emotionally moved by the boy on the beach. That was not an intellectual thing. It wasn't the people sort of thought to themselves, well, is this going to be bad for me or good for me? You saw the kid in the surf, and you thought that's wrong. And that was a moral intuition that came before subsequent rationally analyzed. Well, what do we do about it? Should you do this or this? It's just not right to have this simple idea that I'm a rationalist too, but it's not right, and I don't know if this was your view, to think, well, anything is passion driven is wrong. That's not right. Passion can drive great things. Yeah. And just one sentence right there. And you don't need rights to make that basis. And strong feelings may drive nothing at all. Until they're translated into compelling arguments. In other words, what I'm saying is you don't even need arguments. I mean, I take it the point here is that what moves us here is not the sense that that child or in any other given case has rights. It's that they have needs, right? It's the recognition of human suffering. And that doesn't need to be mediated by any argument, right? Then that's why this is true. If the question is asked, universality can rest in something else, which is common sensibility. If the question is asked, which we've tried to get it asked for the last four years, why should America or why should the West do anything to help the Syrians? Perfectly good question, right? One answer that certainly is not going to answer that question is because many people are outraged by what's happening there, because we know from this example that outraged when it's not connected to action is a very common phenomenon, right? So the only way to do it is to move. You may begin with a passion or an outrage, but then I believe you have to then translate your passion into something that other people can recognize. And that's the business of argument. And the business of argument, I believe, in the largest, most general sense, then you're in the business of public leasing. Yeah, I absolutely agree about that. Well, I am seated here, next to a Tunisian colleague and to Egyptian colleague. If, and I am Israeli, if we could take religion out of our lives, there would be things to change completely. I am not speaking, I am not talking about metaphysics upon religion as politics. If we, religion as politics, if we could get rid of it, really we can turn eternal peace would be installed in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean. Do you really believe that? If I may say something, just to emphasize what you just said, religion, and again, I do, in a sense, agree with everybody with both sides of the argument, in the sense that, yes, yes, no, no. Honestly, religion is important, very important to some people and not important to others. I think it's a personal choice, okay? Some people can be religious, some people don't need to be religious, but to get religion in the context of politics is bad, is very bad. It's bad for the system, for politics, for the human beings, for everything. It's bad for religion, yes, yes. It's bad for religion too, of course. And now, and just one, as a Jew, I belong to the people who invented monotheism. Okay? I am not proud of it. You know, just imagine in what a wonderful world would be living if the gods of the Greeks have won the battle. What a splendid place the world would have been. But we are monotheists, we are monotheists. But we must, we must try really, we must try to, by the force of reason, to liberate ourselves of what religion has done and is still doing to our region and to our peoples. And that, and the sooner the better.