good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight a conversation with author and scholar reza aslan. he has spent a career asking difficult questions about the role of religion in our lives. his previous best-selling books explore the origins of islam and the life and times of jesus. his latest text applies the same rich story telling to the subject of god, aptly titled "god: a human history." we're glad you've joined us for a conversation with author and scholar reza aslan, coming up right now. ♪

♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ please welcome "the new york times" best-selling author, perennial "the new york times" best-selling author reza aslan back to this program. his latest book is one that examines how humanity's intense belief in god has shaped our history. he says it is the most personal book he's ever written, and i think i read somewhere the hardest book he's ever written. >> yeah. >> it's titled "god: a human history." reza, as always, my friend, great to have you back on this program. >> thank you.

it's great to be back. >> why the hardest book to write? >> part of it is because this book is about the history and the evolution and the very development of the concept of god. so i had to go way into prehistory, i mean, 500,000 years. and you know, when you're talking about that long ago, you'realking about concepts such as cognitive theories and anthropological and sociological theories. and you know what i've always prided myself on is being able to take very complex ideas and simplify them, make them interesting and entertaining, and man, that was challenging with this, you know. you're talking about evolutionary theory. it's hard to make that easy and entertaining. i think i did, but that's what -- it was a real struggle. >> yeah. i know there are folk who are watching who take god seriously, as i do, as you do. >> you think so? >> yeah, yeah. [ laughter ] who take god seriously, and my ma mama's watching in indianapolis, indiana, right now.

she's like, did that boy just say he's trying to make god entertaining? so, before i get home tonight, i will get a phone call from my mama. what'd you mean by that? >> what i'm interested in is the way by which people think about god. your mom uses the term god. you use the term god. i use the term god. atheists use the term god. and my question is always what do you mean by god? we just assume we're all talking about the same thing, and we definitely are not. and in fact, this sort of dichotomy you get between believers and nonbelievers about do you believe in god or not, i always say, look, there's a more important question, which is what do you mean when you say god. cause if what you're talking about is some guy who looks up in the heavens and looks down on us and punishes us when you do something wrong and rewards us when we do something good, i don't believe in that god either. and what i've discovered in all of my work, especially in putting this book together, is whether you are a believer or not, and whether you are aware of it or not, the vast majority of people when they say the word

god, what they are envisioning is really a divine version of themselves. we implant our own traits, our own characteristics, our own personalities, our own virtues, our own vices, our own strengths, our own weaknesses upon god. when we imagine god, when we conceive of god what we often do -- again, unconsciously -- is essentially divinize our own traits and then cate this divine version of ourselves. and obviously, you know, that can lead to some devastating consequences. >> that's putting it mildly. [ laughter ] because what you just described can loosely be regarded as either a clone of ourselves with more power, more authority -- >> unlimited power. >> unlimited power, o an alter ego, but neither one of those matches my definition of what god is. >> well, first of all, i just want to emphasize that this is

an unconscious impulse. and part of what i was saying earlier is that when you go back deep, deep back into our prehistoric past and you start to talk about the way in which the very first formulations of religious expression were formed, you begin to discover that a lot of this had to do with a kind of divinizin of ourselves. but it is also possible to sort of ward off that kind of conscious impulse. it takes great effort. but i tnk what i am advocating for in this book is for people to begin to dehumanize god. again, whether you believe in god or not, to think of god less as just an expression of human characteristics, human compulsions, human biases, and something more expansive. i talk a lot about my own person beliefs, which is why this is also a deeply personal book. i as a soofi muslim, i'm a

pantheist. i believe there is no difference between creator, but the sum of creation is god, that you ande and all of us together, we are an expression of the divine. and i think that kind of definiti of god is not just, i think, better, not just i think it's a deeper, more spiritually satisfying, but i think it leads to great peace, greater connectivity between people of different religions. >> these are very divisive times. and one would like to believe, one would like to think that god is the one thing -- we can't agree on the same sports team, we can't agree on the same politicians, same president, et cetera, et cetera, but i'd like to believe, since it says "in god we trust," you want to believe that we're trusting and

believing in the same deity. and if we're divided on everything else in our society, we can't be in agreement on who the god is that we're talking about. >> and i think for me, what i was trying to do is get to the core of why. >> yeah. >> why is it? >> yeah. >> why is it that two people of the same religion can approach the exact same scripture, the exact same verses at thexact same time and come away with two radically different interpretations of it? why is it that religion can be both a force for profound good, for compassion and love and understanding and justice and equally for profound evil, for violence and bigotry? you know, why is it that one person can say with total confidence that god loves gay and straight the same, and one would say, no, god hates gay people? why is that? and again, it all comes back to, we're not talking about god. we're talking about ourselves. we're divinizing ourselves.

it is our compulsions, our biases, our politics, our world views that we are implanting upon god. again, it's an unconscious pulse, but it is something that can be reversed. it is something that we can move away from. and when we do, then i think what you're talking about is what's left, is that sense of unity, the notion that we are people who are more than just our bodies, our material selves, that there is something else, something transcendent that we areinking towards, but we have to change the way that we think about the divine in order for that connectivity to be there. >> so i asked that last question to approach this conversation not because i'm naive about the fact that, you know, we all share the same god, and one could not be naive about that in part because, it's been fascinating for me, and i'm anxious to get your take on this, it's fascinating for me to note that god hasn't gotten much air time in this political

season. since trump took over the white house, god hasn't gotten a lot of air time. and i guess i expected differently in part because the religious right worked so hard to get this guy elected. he wasn't theirirst choice. but when it came down to trump and clinton, they got lock, step and barrel behind donald trump. and franklin graham and a long list of others have been touting this president, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. so, i'm curious to get your take on why god has been so absent in our politics, in our political discourse, when the right worked so hard to get this guy in? >> let me break it down for you here. >> sure, sure, sure. >> so, 81% of white evangelicals voted for donald trump. that's a record. >> 81%. >> that's more people who voted for donald trump, more white evangelicals voted for donald trump than voted for george w. bush who was a white

evangelical. and to this day, the highest support he receives is still from white evangelicals. 74% of white evangelicals continue to support him. and here's what pew found out about that number -- the more devout you are, the more you go to church, the more often you go to church as a white evangelical, the more you support donald trump. this is baffling for people, because as you say, we're talking about a thrice married, lying, greedy man whose world view contradicts the very foundations of christian morality, issues like empathy and care for the poor and, you know, humility. these things donald trump makes a mockery of. and yet, a record number of white evangelicals supported him and his largest support to this day, while the rest of the country has turned away from him -- 31% in the latest ap poll -- still remains white evangelicals. why? i think the three reasons for this that we can't ignore. number one, let's not ignore the white part, okay?

my friend, jim wallace, your friend, jim wallace, said it best -- white evangelals acted more white than they did evangelicals. 67% of evangelicals of color voted for hillary clinton. now, these are people who believe the exact same thg, but they just have a different skin tone. so let's not ignore the white part, okay? number two, trump, in a way that no other president has ever done before, explicitly promised secular power to this group. he made it very clear. all presidents appeal to white evangelicals. all presidents try to take up their cause. this man made it very clear -- you are a powerful group, vote for me and i will give you the power. and now with his attempt to repeal the johnson amendment, to let these, you know, evangelicals actually preach politics from the pulpit without any kind of, you know, cost for that, that gives you an idea of what's happening.

and then third is that this group -- see, trump has broken a lot of things, but in a way, he broke the so-called values voters. again, i rely on the pew poll for this. they did amazing work where they were tracking sort of views among the so-called values voters, the white evangelicals. and in the space of two election cycles, this group went from the group in america that was most likely to say that public morality is important in a political candidate to the least likely to say that. in other words, american atheists believe that a president's morality is important more than white evangelicals do. and so, this to me -- again, it's one of these things where you're like, what is going on? what's happening here? but i have to go back t this fundamental way in which our

brain works, which is that these white evangelicals see in trump a vision of how they understand god. the prosperity gospel is a big part of this, right? they look at trump, they see his economic well-being and they just assume that that's a blessing from god, so he doesn't have to prove his religious, you know, bona fides anymore. they imagine a divine version of their own selves and then implant on that god their prejudices, their world views, their hypernationalism, all of the things that they want toee out of their country. and then it's not that difficult to reconcile someone like trump with what you would imagine, you know, a values voter supporting. >> the problem with all of that, so beautifully stated, is that you say you believe in god, but you made a deal with the devil. >> mm-hmm. >> that's what tt boils down to. >> that's what that boils down to. >> i have a hard time trying to

juxtapose -- >> and you mentioned franklin graham. franklin graham, before the election, there was this meeting of important evangelicals that donald trump spoke to, you know, all of the major players, players were there. and franklin graham in introducing donald trump flat out said, you know, well, yes, you know, this is clearly a sinful man, but so was abraham and so was moses and so was david. so, here you go. we have the legacy of, you know, the great reverend graham, his son essentially excusing this immoral candidate for president by comparing him favorably to the greatest patriarchs and kings of the bible. we have the ability to justify anything simply by divinizing our own characteristics, our own traits. and it's something that we have

to fight against. >> let me ask you, and i'm deliberately asking a question to give you as broad a palette as you need to paint on -- why does this god question matter? why does figuring this out matter for our democracy? >> i think there's two reasons here. number one, no one can deny the role that faith and god and spirituality plays in our country. we are a country that is, according to the pew forum, 72% christian. that's gigantic. but even so, you know, we're a country that encourages religious expression in the public realm. it's part of the dna, the very fabric of this country. we want a spiritually rigorous nation. >> let me cut in. do you think that's still the case, less and less by generation? >> i think it's less and less by generation. that's certainly what the polls show. >> right, right. >> but i do think that it's important to understand that while atheism, for instance, in

this country has gotten much higher, it's still less than 3% of the population. what we are seeing the largest religious category, i should say, in this country, and the fastest growing religious category is the so-called nones, the nonaffiliated, the spiritual but not religious group. but part of the reason why they are refusing to identify with a religion is because of the way that religion has become in the public realm and by politics. but i want to take it one step further than that. one of the arguments that i make in this book is that we are homoreligiosis. the way that we think, our very cognitive processes, the mode of knowing that we are born with, that evolved, you know, out of our humanvolution compels us to look beyond the material world, to believe that we are eternal souls, if you will, trapped in material bodies.

there is countless evidence, psychological work being done to show that we are born with that sentiment, that disbelief is something that you have to learn, that you are born believers, in a sense. and so, there are a couple of ways to think about this. either, okay, it's just an accident of evolution that some so of by-product of some kind of faulty or wishful thinking and that we can, you know, grow out of it as we get older, or we are meant to be lik this. and i believe we are meant to be. i think you believe we're meant to be. and so, if we are meant to be, then we have to live lives in which that spiritual expression is alled to flourish. between live in a society in which it's allowed to flourish. but when we live in a society in which one particular religion can sersede all the others or in which some religious expressions are forcibly denied, as we are experiencing right now

in this administration, then that not just goes against democracy, it goes against who we are as human beings. it goes against our very value as sritual beings. >> i guess the question is, though, what do you do in a democracy where you cannot legislate morality? >> mm-hmm. >> that's the question. >> yeah. look, i think we do a very good job in this country, for the most part, of building our laws on a sense of these sort of universal principles of what is and what is not moral behavior, but there are always going to be gray lines. andse gray lines to me are much more significant. they're far less significant when it comes to penal codes and they're much more significant when it comes to our legislative priorities. you look at how we discuss health care in this country, like it's some sort of privilege, like it's a commodity

that we can, you know, reduce or increase in some way, rather than we are talking about human beings and their very dignity, you know, their sense of self. look at the way that we are talking about tax cuts, you know, the tax policy in this country, how it's all about a transactional issue. you know, w take a little bit from here, we give a little bit there, instead of those priorities being about the moral code upon which this country is founded, the equalityor all, the dignity of all human beings. that's where i would like to see these kinds of conversations, about the role that morality plays in how we pass laws, much more so than in issues of penal coats, what is and what is right behavior. >> you mentioned equality for all. i wonder to what extent the way we see god, to what extent does the way we answer the god

question impact how we see the distinction between charity and justice, between equality and equity. >> yeah. >> see what i'm getting at here? >> again, if you view god in dehumanized terms, if you view god in the kind of pantheistic terms that i'm talking about, then everyone is god. so it becomes impossible for me to deny your dignity because you are the divine as far as i'm concerned. it becomes impossible for me to, for instance, destroy the environment, because the environment is divine as far as i'm concerned. but when we humanize god, when we implant our own ideas and our own personalities upon god, then it becomes very easy for me to create in groups and out groups. then it becomes very easy for me to say that if you do not follow my particular religion, not only are you wrong, but you are demonic, you are the enemy, you

are anti-god, in a sense. because if you're not like me, and gods like me, then you're not like god. you look at these conflicts, they all boil down to this one thing, that we are making ourselves the mirror of what god is, what god wants, who god loves, who god hates. that is catastrophic. >> and what is there to be done about that? >> it's difficult. it's difficult because, as i say, it's a cogtive tick. it's just how we think. but like any thought process, it can be broken, it can be disrupted. you have to begin to start thinking about god as bigger than yourself, bigger than your ideas, even about god, bigger than your religion, bigger than, you know, the way that you can even sort of conceive of the

divine. that to me, by the way, is a more spiritually edifying way of existing. i feel like it allows for a much deeper sense of spiritual fulfillment, to have a god that's bigger than you, bigger than your religion, bigger than your ideas, bigger than your politics, bigger than your nation. that, i think, you know, is not just the right way to think, it's not just, i think, a more peaceful way to think, but i think it's a more spiritually satisfying way of thinking. >> what about this notion that -- how might i put this -- that god is smiling on us and frowning on the rest of the world? >> right. god bless america, you know, that's the thing. i try to remind people about this all the time, that god does not love america. you love america. god doesn't hate gay people. you hate gay people. god isn't a republican or a democrat. god doesn't care about your football team. god doesn't care whether you get to drive a bentley or not.

like, none of that matters, okay? that's you. >> right. >> that's you making yourself and your compulsions divine. and you know, it's funny, because we laugh at it, right? we laugh at it, because when you're confronted with that, when you're confrond with the way you think about something, you suddenly realize how crazy it is and how, you know, unsatisfying even it is. and so, that's my goal, is to just try to get people to think differently, to just recognize for a moment how it is that they themselves are thinking, whether it's about god or any other subject. that's always been my goal, is to just get you to think a little bit differently. and i think if you do, then, again, whether you're a believer or not, this is not just for believers, whether you're a believer or not, i think you start to think differently about the world and your place in it. >> but that exercise requires us to be more selfless in an age, an era where people are becoming more nativist. >> that's right, tribalist. >> tribalist.

>> exactly. >> that's hard to do, isn't it? >> that's very hard to do, very hard to do. the flip side, however, is that we can use that to our advantage, right? look, we are living in a more interconnected world. we are living in a world without borders. we are living in a world in which they very definition of community is shifting dramatically. and yes, it's true that that has led to some unfortunate results, the sense of tribali and the nativism that you are talking about. but at the same time, i really believe that this is more than anything else a reactionary impulse. i don't think that the white supremacy, the nativism, the hypernationalism that we are seeing right now is an independent phenomenon. i think is a reaction to something greater that is happening, and that is the progress of society, the pluralism of our nation. we are, as demographers tell us, a decade, decade and a half away

from becoming the first country in the world to become majority minorities. that's an astonishing and miraculous ing, but it also scares the bejesus out of a lot of people, and that's what we are seeing. this is a reaction, not the thing itself. >> the book is called "god: a human history," by reza aslan. highly recommended. reza, always good to see you. thanks for sharing your insights, my friend. >> thanks, tavis. appreciate it >> my pleasure. that's our show for tonight. thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith. ♪ >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. >> hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time as we take a deep dive into what's happening around the country. that's next time. we'll see you then. ♪

♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs ston from viewers like you. thank you. ♪

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