CFI-LA’s FEED YOUR BRAIN Lecture Series
presents
God Needs Therapy
11 a.m., Sunday, January 31, 2010
Yahweh is a mess. He wants love but is full of wrath; demands obedience but comes up with humans; and insists that history go his way but keeps starting over with Eden, the Flood, Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, Egypt, and Canaan. Emmy-nominated writer/producer Tom Quinn will explore how this god came to be and how he has psychologically evolved over the centuries from a lonely fertility god into the all-powerful and all-knowing, if slightly confused, deity we know today.
The stories about god reveal a colorful literary character who changes, grows, learns, and occasionally screws up. He is driven, wise, demanding, rather an egotist, often short-sighted, and forgiving. Maybe it’s because the god of the Bible is actually a hybrid of two earlier gods: El and Yahweh. Each had their own personality, priesthood, and agenda, and each can still be found in the pages of The Old Testament, which was written to fuse them into a single, hybrid deity. His personality is a tug of war between these two earlier deities.
Quinn has written and produced programs for the Discovery Channel, History Channel, and others, and has traveled the world making programs that explain silly ideas and bizarre beliefs—from urban legends and The Da Vinci Code to religious myths and conspiracy theories. A graduate of the American Film Institute, Quinn worked in development for HBO and DreamWorks and has been a Los Angeles-based film critic and entertainment reporter. Excerpts from his upcoming book, What Do You Do with a Chocolate Jesus? (An Irreverent History of the New Testament, can be found on his blog site: Choco-Jesus.blogspot.com.
WHEN: 11:00 a.m.,
Sunday, January 31, 2010.
COST: $8
The Center for Inquiry-Los Angeles
4773 Hollywood Blvd.
Hollywood, CA 90027
