should say, in this country, and the fastest growing religious category is the so-called nones, the nonaffiliatedspiritual but not religious group. but part of the reason why they arare refusing to identify with 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

the first, which we talk about a lot, is the rise of the so-called nons, right, the nonaffiliated. gious identity but who also don't call themselves atheists. it's the old, you know, i'm spiritual but not religious thing. i think part of the reason why that's growing so fast is for a lot of people religion has become corrupted by politics mostly. the other really interesting trend is the way we identify ourselves in religious collectives is starting to change. it used to be that it was just like you and your church. that was your community. the people around you, inside this building. but because of the internet and because of new ways of communicating with other people, now we're seeing new expressions of religiosity pop up on the internet, on the web, you know, people -- you might have more in common with somebody in indonesia than you have in common with somebody in your own church. it's hard to know where this is going but to me it's all really fascinating, what's happening with human spirituality right now. >> and the new book is "god, a human history." ressa aslan, thank you.