President Bush, First Lady, heads of state, Members of
Congress, distinguished guests…

I am deeply honored to be speaking with you on this significant and moving occasion. As you have heard, I am not a man of the cloth nor a political leader. I am a physician and a scientist, here this morning as a private citizen, but who had the incredible privilege of leading the Human Genome Project. I am also a believer in God.

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I am honored to be here tonight, and I thank my friend Cal Thomas for the invitation. I am, as you have heard, a child of the Episcopal Church—which is, at the moment, rather like saying I was one of the first to book passage on the Titanic.

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Just as people sometimes delude themselves that they are “in love,” so can they believe that they are praying, that they are having a religious experience, even though it is only a false spirituality.

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George Herbert, in his celebrated 17th-century poem "Prayer," likens his subject to everything under the sun – God's breath, the Milky Way, the bird of paradise, heaven's manna, the land of spices, softness and peace, love and bliss – before concluding, out of breath, that it is "something understood."

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Only a few years ago, I would have blithely answered this question "No." Care for the natural world was not a priority of our governmental affairs work. Nor was it a priority in my personal and family life. What changed? I changed.

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The National Prayer Breakfast, an annual gathering of inspiring speeches and solemn moments of silence, recently drew President Bush and hundreds of lawmakers when it was held in Washington. This year, the event was unusual in that it was attended by much of what is the most religiously diverse Congress in American history.

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Abraham Lincoln, whose birthday is celebrated February 12, never kept a diary, and never lived to write an autobiography. He was so utterly private a man that even his best friends frequently admitted that there were regions of his mind to which they were never granted access. He was a “terribly reticent, secretive, shut mouth man,” said his law-partner of fourteen years, William Henry Herndon, “and close-minded as to his plans, wishes, hopes, and fears.”

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Beyond all extensive philosophical and verbal discussions, let us believe that "need" and "question" would make human beings anxious and anguished.

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More than 17 centuries have passed since the death of Saint Valentine, who served as bishop of Terni, a small city in the heart of Italy, from 197 until 273 CE. Valentine was a man of God. He preached in Terni, and beyond, until he was beheaded in Rome during the persecutions of Christians by the Emperor Aurelius.

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The erotic carvings of medieval Indian temples, such as those of Khajuraho in central and Konarak in eastern India, have always puzzled people of other religions. If there is one clear and unambiguous message in the sensuality of these sculpted representations, it is that the human soul is preeminently amorous, and nothing if not amorous.

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Valentine’s Day is a moment we mark on the calendar with a declaration of love, that indefinable but unmistakable magnetic force that pulls our hearts together and makes them one.

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God, or at least an evocation of the Almighty, was there in the very beginning. In November 1800, on his second night in the unfinished White House, in a letter to Abigail, President John Adams wrote words that are now carved in the State Dining Room: “I pray Heaven to bestow the best of Blessings on this House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof.”

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View the first On Faith live online debate today at noon. Noted author on secularism Susan Jacoby debates R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, about organized religion: Has it done more good or more harm?

Caryle Murphy
11:55 AM
Welcome to On Faith's first live online debate. Today we're pleased to have with us noted author Susan Jacoby, whose latest book is "Freethinkers: History of American Secularism," and R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, flagship school of one of the largest religious denominations in this country. In a few mintues, they will begin debating the good and the bad of organized religion. Stay with us!

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“There has always been tension in Hinduism between sexuality and celibacy,” said Sudhir Kakar, a noted Indian psychoanalyst who also has translated--with “On Faith” panelist Wendy Doniger--the Kamasutra.

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First, the formalities: Yes, of course, you can be critical of Israel and not be anti-Semitic or a bad Jew.

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"Can you criticize Israel and not be anti-Semitic?"

Yes.

Can you be anti-Semitic and not criticize Israel?

Absolutely. See Jean-Marie Le Pen, an enthusiastic admirer of Israel's way of 'dealing' with Arabs.

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If criticism of Israel somehow makes one an anti-Semite or less than a faithful Jew, then Israel itself is full of anti-Semites, most of them faithful Jews.

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It is not anti-Semitic to be critical of Israel, but it can be anti-Semitic to be critical only of Israel.

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The claim that the family tomb of Jesus has been found with his ossuary or bone-box identified in it as Yeshua bar Yosef (Jesus, son of Joseph) dances along the delicate interface between history and faith.

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