Why I Wrote SWITCHING TO GODDESS: HUMANITY'S TICKET TO THE FUTURE.

[Jeri]

I wrote *Switching to Goddess* because I believe deeply that we humans must ditch our sky/war/father gods and return to the Earth/Peace/Mother Goddesses most of our ancestors worshiped in the Neolithic era.

I had read other books about how fabulous life was when people used peaceful goddesses as role models. These books also told how bad life got when warrior sky gods like Dieus (he later became Zeus) took over and forced the peaceful Goddesses to duck underground.

As an archaeologist, I've been working for several years on my own, updated version of this historical pattern. In my book I wanted to take things further. Instead of just saying "Yes, the old Goddesses were good and the warrior gods are bad," I wanted to say, "If this is the case, we need to dump these duddy war-causing gods and bring back our old Peace Goddesses!"

So that's what my book's about -- it says that in order to save humanity, we need to scrap all the gods who push us into war -- gods like Jehovah, Allah, Yahweh and Vishnu. Now that we have nuclear weapons, we can't afford to put up with deadly dudes like these. But we also need deities who are peaceful themselves, and who push peace -- which the old Earth/Peace/Mother Goddesses did.

BTW, the book just came out last month (Nov. 2008) and was published by O Books in the UK. It's being sold in North America, Europe, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and China.

[Minnie]

Jeri, people think we are whisling in the wind when we write books proclaiming "...we also need deities who are peaceful themselves, and who push peace -- which the old Earth/Peace/Mother Goddesses did." I am in total agreement with your view. I hate war and what's worse, what it does to human being's minds and limbs. It's so simple to worship Earth/Peace/Mother Goddesses. Perhaps EPMG was silenced because the hawks could hot deal with negotiation.

[Jeri]

I think you're right, Minnie. Most people would probably think we're whistling in the wind when we say that simply switching to peaceful deities would automatically bring peaceful societies.

And I do think it's a *bit* more complicated than that. Although most people have blinders on to the fact, it's clear to me that Jehovah, Allah and the Hindu god Vishnu are war gods, and that they help keep war alive among us. Over half the world now worships these three gods. So these gods have to be gotten rid of.

What caused the switch from Goddesses to gods needs to be dealt with too. I think what caused the switch was something I call "starvation culture." It arose when a large part of the earth turned to desert around 4000 BC, and many of the world's first farmers starved to death. A few groups, however, survived. We are their descendants, and we're carrying on starvation culture even today into the 21st century.