The year was 1951. The soon to be Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia—Faisal bin Abdelaziz Al Saud who later became King and then in 1975 was murdered by his nephew—stepped out of a black Lincoln limousine parked in the drive of our home. He was surrounded by body guards. I was very young then. Today, so many years later I can still picture every detail and feel the awe of his presence.

"Was that the moment I made my decision, one that years later became the genesis for this book? It may have been. If my father could become the most powerful American banker for all of the Middle East at the House of Morgan, so important that even this princely man from Saudi Arabia would visit us at our home and drink coffee and eat my mother’s pastries, why couldn’t I too be like my father and find my dreams in this strange foreign world?

"So, later I too set out to follow that same dream. It was a dream that over the years took me to every corner of the world. Also, it was a dream that ended in an obsession to solve a riddle.”

Now let me fast forward a half century and begin my presentation to you with a sudden revelation.

Eight years ago, sitting in a Hebrew Bible studies class taught by a professor from Yeshiva University -- I was the lone gentile -- , I came upon a question. It had stumped me. It stumped him too. Now, eight years later it may be the most important question facing those who worship and revere the Hebraic God. Its answer could determine the life or death of the human species.

I said to the professor:

Genesis has the deceiver define for the very first time your Hebrew God. This sets the biblical stage for His nature. And ours too. The deceiver tells us that if we eat from the tree of knowledge, we will be like the gods, knowing good and evil. He says we will then be like HIM.

Rabbi, with due respect let me ask you a question:

But first, a statement of fact:

The deceiver is defining your God. It is the deceiver who, for the first time, lays out the definition. The deceiver tells us your God, the God of the Nation of Israel, is a God knowing both good and evil. The deceiver does not say that He is a God who knows only good or knows only evil. The definition is specific. He says that this God is a God who knows both. Your Hebrew Bible then goes on to build His persona from this definition.

So, here we have a Hebraic anthropomorphic God, a god like we are. This is a God who would become angry and destroy all of human civilization except for Noah and his family. Years later when the Christians pick up on this definition of your God, He is a God who would have His son tortured and crucified. One hundred years after that, again for Christians, He would have John in his Book of Revelation outline in gruesome detail how this god will destroy all of humanity for a second time, allowing only the select few to join Him. Then, in the seventh century it gets worse. The prophet Muhammad discovers in the Jewish settlements around Mecca and Medina this fearsome retributive god and calls Him Allah. Islam is born. It is this Allah who would destroy the Infidels on 9/11.

Now, to the question: I ask you; what right did this deceiver have to define the nature of your god? If he is by definition a deceiver, how can we be assured his definition of God was not a deception? Why should you Jews trust the words of a deceiver to define the nature of your God?

The professor stood in silence. He believed in the sacredness of the Hebrew Scriptures. He had no answer. 

Now, in the 21st century, with the first signs of our possible extinction at hand, we are called to ask; how valid is the deceiver’s definition of this God of the Jews, a God since shared by the other two religions of Abraham? And if it is valid, as many Jews, Christians and Muslims believe, is this Hebraic God now about to destroy us again?

There is a more disturbing question, one that modern science sees as a possibility; by our belief in Him, are we through collective intentionality about to destroy ourselves?

This is the question that led me to write my third book; Q Will Human Species Survive?

When I was taking that class, almost all Christian authors writing on biblical subjects were either serious academic religious scholars or Christian evangelicals. None were physicists or behavioral psychologists who had opened their minds to think metaphysically about “intentionality” and other bizarre quantum behaviors such as the possible superposition between intentionality and determinant influence. These authors could only think in terms of the planetary intervention of God, identified in traditional religious terms as the miraculous. And, "the end of times" was a matter of blind faith in an all knowing God.

It soon became apparent to me that not only contemporary religious authors but also the religious publishing industry had missed the larger picture.  Barriers had been erected. Religious discussion had to fit into pre defined niches. And what was placed in these niches of had to be religiously correct! 

Also, throughout academia there was a certain religious correctness. In the classroom, tenure was a risk if religion was explored too deeply. 

This is the question that led me to write a third book named Q Will Human Species Survive?

I was, nevertheless, encouraged to see the beginning of a change in religious writing. Popular books like the Da Vinci Code took hold. Additionally, serious books were coming from authors. They began to break the mold. Suddenly, anti Catholicism and atheism came into vogue; also, books critical of Islam. With the likes of Elaine Pagels, Karen Armstrong, Don Culpit, Llloy Geering and Shelby Spong, all Jesus Seminar authors, serious Christian religious inquiry entered the popular scene. But the work of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt critical of American Jewry and Jimmy Carter's book critical of Israel showed its limitations. Their books were off limits. Anti Semitism was a raw nerve. The response of many American Jews was understandable. Arab anti Zionism and Holocaust memories run deep.

This is not just an American Jewish phenomenon. Among American Christians, underlying feelings about the country's religious manifest destiny run to the depths of the soul of protestant and catholic America. Certain kinds of criticism is off limits. These feelings arise out of ancient biblical imagery. It is an imagery that shaped the American experience. To understand it, all one has to do is read the Gettysburg address or listen to the word choices over eight years of an American evangelical Christian president or the word choices in the candidates' speeches during the election period afterword. John McCain's reference to "a cause greater than himself" and his certainty in defining "evil" ring true to the religious battle cry heard time and again over the last three thousand years of religious history.

Religious forces deeply influence what Americans hear on TV, read in newspapers and, importantly for this presentation, read in the form of books. In the selling of books, editors and literary agents set the tone for what is and what is not published. Unwritten codes of religious acceptability determine their choices more than they will admit. Why else was the John Mearsheimer/Stephen Walt piece critical of American Jews refused US publication? Why was a supposedly benign book about the young wife of the Prophet Muhammad pulled the last minute from the market?

(Drs. Mearsheimer and Walt, political scientists at the University of Chicago, in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy argued that no lobby has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy more than The Israel Lobby. They were unable to find a US publisher and finally took their book to London where it was published and became a world sensation.)

This does not mean that all religious criticism was off limits. Atheistic authors like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and Norman Mailer's On God, were Ok and therefore could receive enthusiastic support. At the other extreme, religious books promoting soft “feel good” psycho-cybernetic religious thinking were also OK.

As a result—and this is where my new book by the name of Q Will Human Species Survive ? enters the picture—there are no books speaking to the underlying religious beliefs that are now tearing at the fabric of America. There are no books linking evangelical Christianity to America’s recent social and economic decline. There are no books dealing with the amorality of Christian social conservatism. In a publishing industry that prides itself on being politically incorrect, subtle distinctions between the good and bad in Judaism and Christianity—there are no books critical of Judaism—are assiduously avoided. Constructive religious criticism is muted.

America is paying a price. For Christians there is an unresolved tension that has arisen from the positivistic nature of much of their Christian belief and the increasingly negative outcomes. Many see their nation as having lost its moral compass. They see Ronald Reagan’s vision of the city on the hill fading before their eyes. The failures in Iraq have reinforced this. The pictures from Abu Ghraib were a stark reminder of the duplicity of American values. In one broad stroke Abu Ghraib erased the memory throughout the entire world of a vision etched by the years of American post World War II “Christian” patrimony.

Americans are beginning to view their country as a great nation diminishing in world power and influence. It is becoming clear that eight years of evangelical “faith based” government held the country back from assuming the global leadership role it should have assumed. Rather, there was an abdication of that role to other nations. This has left a deep scar on the American psyche.

Salman Rushdie discussed this problem in a NY Times op-ed when he wrote: 

"Yet, one has the sense of things shutting down, of barriers being erected, of … dialogue being stifled…."

These barriers have prevented Americans from seeing with clarity the problems before them. Issues vital to American survival resting on an understanding of religious belief  lay clearly in front of them; however, because of the “barriers being erected”, to which Salman Rushdie refers, Americans are blinded. They simply assume that Judeo-Christianity in its many forms is all knowing and therefore mostly good for their country. They remain unaware of the inherently destructive power of much of Judeo-Christian religious thought. As a result, there is confusion over why many of the government’s decisions made during the Bush period turned out to be so wrong. Politically correct rules governing religious debate have stifled any form of inquiry into the culpability of Judaism and Christianity for errors made.  Any real criticism of Christianity and Judaism is off limits.

Islamic criticism is handled with care.  All focus is placed on Islamic terrorism with almost not attention paid to its religious roots. The raw and unvarnished fact is that Jews and Christians in America can not come forward with an argument against Islam without looking into the still waters of the origins of their own religious beliefs. Like it or not, Islam was built upon the same biblical exclusive injunctions found in Judaism and Christianity. Many of these injunctions remain very much alive. They have no place in our 21st century world.

This “dumbing” of America has come at a time when an intellectual sophistication on religious matters has never been more important, and for the reason stated as follows:

The solutions to the most troubling problems facing our world, including those dealing with the environment,  are now mainly theological.

My own career experience had convinced me of the importance of the theological. Unlike the academics noted above, I had spent thirty years walking the narrow line in a world threatened by International Communism. I had made my living working as a risk manager during the Cold War and its aftermath. Then, the solutions were clearly political and economic.

After the fall of the Soviet Union I observed a tectonic shift taking place. The Cold War was over. The risks were now different. There was an essential ingredient that did not exist before. It was the role of religion as an underlying force driving geopolitical behavior.

What was it the Christian evangelical American president had missed when he decided to invade a Muslim country? Was he fighting with bombs when he should have been fighting with sophisticated theological and philosophical argument? If Jesus could put the Pharisees in their place, why was this president unable to do the same with bin Laden and Ahmajinadad? Was he blinded by his own religious experience? Had his faith in Jesus as his personal savior clouded his mind? Was this the reason he had responded to the threat from Islam after 9/11 through the cold war good versus evil prism?

I decided that I needed to understand all of the religious forces at play in the broadest, yet deepest possible way. So I turned to some of the finest professors in the United States, both through correspondence courses and by enrolling in courses at Florida Atlantic University. I studied Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I also embarked on an extensive reading program. (as seen in the book’s bibliography) To obtain an understanding of the Christian evangelical experience I joined a Christian evangelical church. I became a leader/teacher in the Christian ecumenical Stephen Ministry. To understand Christian liberal views on an academic level, I became an associate of The Westar Institute (Jesus Seminar) and attended their seminars and conferences. I took courses in Jewish studies to understand the rabbinical view of Orthodox and Reformed Judaism and I broadened my Jewish friendships in order to have a deeper understanding of the Jewish Holocaust and Israel experience on a personal level. I studied Kaballah. I studied the Greek classics.

During this period I wrote:

Holy War The Blood of Abraham and then The Infidels

My focus in these books was on religion as the cause of world conflict. I wrote them in order to sharpen my critical thinking in the areas of philosophy and religion, to improve my writing skills, and to test the market for my ideas.  Much to my surprise, I found that I soon had a following. Initially, my Amazon rankings were as low as the mid 10,000’s for both books; however, I soon also realized that even though I was receiving excellent reviews, I would need the advertising and logistical support of a large established publisher to give national and international attention to what I had to say.

Then I realized I had understated the issue. There was something of profound significance taking place in our world well beyond the religious conflict about which I had been writing. It was nevertheless inextricably connected to it. It was a destructive undermining force working against human survival. I was brought back to that verse in Genesis, as well as the modern quantum mechanical idea of intentionality, in this case collective intentionality. Could we be bringing an end to our species? I began my research for anew.

I concluded that there was a strong possibility of human species extinction on our planet, and an underlying reason for this was human behavior arising out of religious belief. Or, stated in another way;  the absence of corrective human behavior as a result of the belief images that arose out of religious belief.

I named the new book "Q" for “Question” because I believe we will not escape from our downward spiral until we have honestly examined a question. It appears on the book cover:  Q Will Human Species Survive?

With the first signs of our possible extinction at hand, are many Jews, Christians and Muslims subliminally encouraging an end to our world.

Q puts a question to them by asking—quoting from the book:

"why do you not, have the courage to challenge the words in your ancient scriptures, or will you, as you have time and again throughout your history, turn inward and before your Torah in your synagogues and before your alters in your cathedrals and on your prayer mats in your mosques continue as you have in the past to cower in supplication asking again and again for His strength to slaughter others and to be slaughtered for His sake? Will you have the courage to defy the predator beast that is very much a part of your religious belief, something that may have been present inside of your consciousness for two hundred fifty thousand years or more?  Will you have you the courage to break from your past and create the new forms of religious imagery needed to sustain humanity over the coming millennia? I say to you: The future of not only western civilization, but also the human species and the planet that sustains it rests on your answer."

Jews, Christians and Muslims must ask:

Are we to let this Genesis God continue to punish us and even destroy life on our planet for a second time around?

Q was written as a “wake up call” to each of these three ancient religions.  It was written to suggest the possibility of a new paradigm for humanity, one that will allow for the creation of new forms of religious imagery that will sustain our species in a consonant relationship with Planet Earth over the coming millennia. It was written to show us how we can reconnect with our Creator and be the way we were before Eve had that fatal meeting with the deceiver.