It is high time that we subject religion as a global phenomenon to the most intensive multidisciplinary research we can muster, calling on the best minds on the planet. Why? Because religion is too important for us to remain ignorant about. It affects not just our social, political, and economic conflicts, but the very meanings we find in our lives. For many people, probably a majority of the people on Earth, nothing matters more than religion. For this very reason, it is imperative that we learn as much as we can about it....

Wouldn’t such an exhaustive and invasive examination damage the phenomenon itself? Mightn’t it break the spell? That is a good question, and I don’t know the answer. Nobody knows the answer. That is why I raise the question, to explore it carefully now, so that we (1) don’t rush headlong into inquiries we would all be much better off not undertaking, and yet (2) don’t hide facts from ourselves that could guide us to better lives for all. The people on this planet confront a terrible array of problems—poverty, hunger, disease, oppression, the violence of war and crime, and many more—and in the twenty-first century we have unparalleled powers for doing something about all these problems. But what shall we do? Good intentions are not enough. If we learned anything in the twentieth century, we learned this, for we made some colossal mistakes with the best of intentions. In the early decades of the