Religion Has No Earthly Purpose, So Why Do We Cling to It? | Reza Aslan | Big Think

Religion Has No Earthly Purpose, So Why Do We Cling to It?

Watch the newest video from Big Think

Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Religion, and the mentality it brings, have arguably shaped the human species more than any other force. We don't understand it, and perhaps never will. We are so far removed from religion's creation (pun presented but not intended) that we have instead just woven it into our daily lives and accepted it as something we can't understand. This leads to questioning, mostly about what religion actually is and what is the "right" one. But instead of asking "what" religion is (e.g. is there a big man in the sky who lives in a cloud, or egads maybe that crazy science-fiction author L. Ron Hubbard had it right after all?!), perhaps we're asking the wrong question. Children seem to be born with an innate understanding of "souls" or at the very least the semblance of self amongst something greater - posits Reza Aslan - and this knowledge that religion is based on a literal primitive instinct should allow us to understand the question of "why" religion is. If you go back far enough, Reza says, you can pretty much pinpoint various reasons as to why religion is. It's an interesting video, and one that is sure to have you thinking about the subject matter much later. Reza's latest book is God: A Human History.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

REZA ASLAN:

Reza Aslan is an internationally renowned writer, commentator, professor, producer, and scholar of religions. His books, including his #1 New York Times Bestseller, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, have been translated into dozens of languages around the world. He is also a recipient of the prestigious James Joyce Award. His newest book God: A Human History (2017) is out now.

Aslan’s first book, International Bestseller No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, has been translated into seventeen languages, and was named one of the 100 most important books of the last decade by Blackwell Publishers. He is also the author of Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in a Globalized Age (originally titled How to Win a Cosmic War), as well as editor of two volumes: Tablet and Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East, and Muslims and Jews in America: Commonalties, Contentions, and Complexities.

In 2006, Aslan co-founded BoomGen Studios—the premiere entertainment brand for creative content from and about the Middle East—which has provided an array of targeted services ranging from strategic messaging to grassroots marketing to publicity and social media outreach, to producers, studios, and filmmakers—including Jon Stewart’s Rosewater, Netflix’s The Square, Disney’s Aladdin on Broadway and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, The Weinstein Company’s Miral, Discovery and TLC’s All American Muslim, and National Geographic’s Amreeka.

Aslan’s degrees include a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies from Santa Clara University (Major focus: New Testament; Minor: Greek), a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard University (Major focus: History of Religions), a PhD in the Sociology of Religions from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction.

Aslan is a tenured Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside and serves on the board of trustees for the Chicago Theological Seminary and The Yale Humanist Community, which supports atheists, agnostics, and humanists at home and abroad.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

Reza Aslan: Studies of children have shown that we are born with this instinct for what’s called “substance dualism,” the idea that the body and the mind or soul, however you want to think of the psyche, are separate.

Children who as young as three or four years old, who have not grown up with any kind of religious instruction, naturally assume that they have a soul.

And so I think a lot of theorists believe that this belief in the soul is universal, that it can be traced back deep into our evolution. Why? There’s a whole host of reasons for that: I mean I suppose that if you’re an “unbeliever” you think that it’s just some kind of evolutionary accident—It’s a trick of the mind, as it were, that makes you think that you are an immaterial being inside a material body.

If you’re a believer you think that it’s probably because there is a soul and maybe perhaps that we were intentionally created in such a way as to think that there is more to us than just the material realm.

Read the full transcript at