I don’t know why I’m on this Bill Moyers kick, but here are clips from an interview of Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood. She explains how languages with past and future tenses necessitate curiosity about a God-figure because we eventually come to ask about what came before and after that which is knowable to us.

As a “strict agnostic”, Atwood clearly has studied religions and possesses an appreciation for how they can reflect human experience, but she wishes people did not use religions as weapons. Atwood’s clarity and lack of cynicism (or sentimentality, for that matter) makes her a perfect antidote to Dr. Richard Dawkins’ militant condescension.

Link to Part 1 here, Part 2 embedded above. They disallowed embedding of Part 1, who knows why? Part 3 is after the jump.