“You’re not tolerant,” says this Christian philosopher, “if you're indifferent. You're tolerant if you disapprove of the other person's religion but put up with it nonetheless."

When disaster strikes, the character of a culture is revealed, and in Japan, perceptions of disaster are deeply rooted in traditional religious culture.

"The individual soldier often feels not that he or she is broken, but that the world itself is broken, and there is no easy fix for a broken world," writes US Navy Commander Greg Parker.

"As the mind becomes a little more quiet, the sacredness of everything, within and without, becomes clear," says Norman Fischer, a practicing Jew and a Zen Buddhist priest who has been teaching meditation for over 30 years.

"The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them," said artist Mark Rothko.

Watch religion scholar Stephen Prothero, author of the new book "God Is Not One," discuss why all religions are not different paths to the same God and why distinctions among religions matter.

We have a profile of Krista Tippett, the host of the weekly public radio conversation "Speaking of Faith," now titled "On Being". As Tippett and others note, the program might have also been called "Speaking of Life," because it explores big life questions through the personal stories of poets, scientists, writers, and sometimes a theologian or even a journalist, of all faiths.

What is the good life? Is it dinner with the family, a walk in the woods, a baseball game at the local park? More importantly, is there an ethic within the contemporary, technologically dominated culture of America that gets us to the good life? These are the questions philosopher Albert Borgmann wrestles with in his most recent book, REAL AMERICAN ETHICS: TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUR COUNTRY (University of Chicago Press, 2006).

Betty Rollin reports on atheistic authors Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, and other outspoken atheists, including Julia Sweeney and her off-Broadway performance, “Letting Go of God.”

Read more of the November 17, 2006 R & E interview with Harvard professor Harvey Cox.