The Evolution of God

by Robert Wright

Book Overview

In this sweeping narrative that takes us from the Stone Age to the Information Age, Robert Wright unveils an astonishing discovery: there is a hidden pattern that the great monotheistic faiths have followed as they have evolved. Through the prisms of archaeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology, Wright's findings overturn basic assumptions about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and are sure to cause controversy. He explains why spirituality...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316734918
• ISBN13: 9780316734912
• Release Date: June 2009
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 1.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 6.1" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Details. Connections. Tapestry.

Thoroughly and thoughtfully argued premise that gods were evolved into God. The folks who enjoy arguing with their Christian friends about Biblical contradictions and how God became curiously nicer over time will eat this for breakfast. Intellectually entertaining. Verbose in many spots. Essentially supersedes Karen Armstrong HISTORY OF GOD; cannot imagine needing both and this is the more scholarly argued and vigorous work of the two.

Excellent Book!

Relished every page of it....Ambrosia for the mind...Recommended for those that have an intellectual interest in understanding humans and the god concept.

Thought provoking.

On balance, Robert Wright's "The Evolution of God" is a positive contribution to the debate about religion and society. It presents a convincing narrative of the evolution of man's conception of God in the three Abrahamic faiths. Drawing from this narrative Wright proposes that there is an overall directionality to moral progress. As human global society has become more connected principally via commerce, relationships between cultures that trade become more `non-zero-sum'. This leads to more tolerance of other groups, religions, god concepts and an increase in `moral imagination'. Wright suggests a parallel between the directionality of increasingly complex relations between life forms that results from natural selection and the directionality of man's moral development resulting from increasing non-zero-sum relationships between tribes, nations and cultures. However, I have trouble with Wright's arguments on several levels, 1. It is not clear that we are evolving morally. Yes, we have significantly reduced the portion of the world that accepts slavery; and in much of the world the rights of women has greatly increased. However, just 70 years ago, we had totalitarian governments (both fascist and communist) that committed genocide. These governments benefited greatly from technology through mass media and control of communications. Furthermore, the globe has lived under the threat of nuclear annihilation that apparently was solved not through moral development, but rather as a result of fear of mutually assured destruction. Had we not contained the nuclear arms race, human civilization would have essentially been destroyed far more than classical civilization was destroyed in the dark ages. 2. Traditional religion is becoming less relevant in Europe and to educated elites in general. More and more of the world is becoming sensitized to global limits to growth of human society. Europe's recognition of the threats posed by global warming and energy insecurity coupled with the decreasing relevance of traditional religion to European society as a whole, point to a global ethical viewpoint that essentially is a discontinuous break from the moral development of the past three thousand years. Wright recognizes the threat that global limits pose to mankind and he suggests that there will be pressure for effective global government, and that this will be based on a global morality. I share his hopefulness, but I also see plenty of opportunity for moral regression in the future. 3. Natural selection depends on slowly varying environmental conditions that allow the small steps of generational adaptation to create new species that fill the new survival niches created by the changing environmental conditions. Abrupt environmental change (either natural or man-made) will result in mass extinctions. The explosion of communications technology makes cultural evolution subject to much more abrupt non-linear change than biological evolution,

A Baha'i's Perspective on "The Evolution of God"

I just finished reading "The Evolution of God" by Robert Wright, an intriguing and exhaustively well researched book. Wright is a devout materialist who, to the dismay of many of his atheistic friends, sees a directionality in religion and human history towards something which can meaningfully and objectively be ascribed as moral truth and divinity. In introducing his book and worldview he states: "In this book I talk about the history of religion, and its future, from a materialist standpoint. I think the origin and development of religion can be explained by reference to concrete, observable things-human nature, political and economic factors, technological change, and so on...On the one hand, I think gods arose as illusions, and that the subsequent history of the idea of god is, in some sense, the evolution of an illusion. On the other hand: (1) the story of this evolution itself points to the existence of something you can meaningfully call divinity; and (2) the "illusion," in the course of evolving, has gotten streamlined in a way that moved it closer to plausibility. In both of these senses, the illusion has gotten less and less illusory." He uses this explanatory framework to explain the evolution of religion from early pantheism and polytheism, to more recent monolatrism (belief in many gods, but worship of only one) and monotheism. By doing this he recognizes a clear trend in history, one that is leading to a universalistic theology. To do this however, he deconstructs many of the religious texts using recent religious and archaeological scholarship. For example, he suggests that contrary to popular belief, Judaism has highly polytheistic origins. It was only due to geopolitical circumstance that brought it first into monolatry and finally monotheism. He suggests that many of the attributed sayings of Jesus, especially those concerning universal love (ie. "love your enemies"), were added after the fact by Paul and others as a expansion strategy in the highly cosmopolitan Roman empire. He points to the fact that the earliest gospel of Mark, written approximately four decades after the Crucifixion, has many fewer miracles, universalistic sayings, and theological underpinnings than the later gospels, written five to seven decades after. The introduction of the "Logos" in John might have been influenced by Philo's attempts to reconcile Jewish and Greek traditions. He suggests that the timeline of the Quran matches almost perfectly with the plight of Muhammad. For example, the earlier attributed writings include a greater moral consideration for even polytheists, possibly because his group was small and he needed to reach out to others. His later writings are much more militaristic and intolerant, possibly because he commanded great military power and he no longer needed to compromise his theology. The bottom line in his whole book is that religion is an expression of facts on the ground. To say that one religion causes people to be tole

Religion: explained purely naturally, or not?

Robert Wright is an intellectually curious journalist and a fine writer whose previous books (The Moral Animal & Nonzero) I enjoyed. Wright's new book explores the character of religion through history, and, marshalling scholarly research, shows how religious ideas developed in response to changing social and political circumstances. The explanations make no appeal to the supernatural. But Wright sees progress (however haphazard and intermittent) in the moral dimension of religion through time, which leads him to speculate that this phenomenon actually points to the existence of something worthy of being named divine. The bulk of the book is an interesting run through research findings from anthropology, archaeology and textual analysis on the topic of historical religious ideas and practices. The tour begins with a look at hunter-gatherer style animism and the role of gods and religion in tribal cultures, continues with an examination of the development of the various pantheons of gods in ancient civilizations, and then tackles the Abrahamic traditions. In all cases there seems to be a plausible explanation of prevailing religious ideas and the character of God or gods changing in concert with the "facts on the ground". As nations make war, their gods intone contempt for non-believers. As empires digest conquests, they co-opt the gods of their new subjects. More positively, as societies enter into non-zero sum relationships with a wider circle of neighbors, their gods become more universal and more supportive of a broader moral vision. Wright also presents his own thoughts on what it all means. First off (repeating the theme from Nonzero), Wright argues that with the passage of time, humans have expanded their circle of moral consideration, and that this constitutes an arrow of moral progress through history. However, it seems hard to point to the evolution of our ideas regarding gods or God (more loving, less vengeful), and say that this adds anything to the story of moral progress. His analysis doesn't provide evidence that religion drives moral progress - it seems to mainly reflect it. Nevertheless, in the final section, Wright proposes that the existence of an historical arrow of moral progress might be evidence for an objective moral order which transcends nature. He argues that even if the traditional idea of a personal God seems highly implausible given naturalism, it might nonetheless point (however imperfectly) towards truth. His arguments for this position aren't strong, however, consisting as they do of analogies and a repeated appeal that something special must be going; I don't think many traditional materialist-atheists will be convinced. This is unfortunate because I think his intuition is sound. I think that any naturalist worldview needs to be expansive enough to account for first person experience and the meaning and values which arise from our engagement with the world. In any case, I admire Wright's

Well-Researched, Judicious, and Enlightening

This new book from acclaimed author Robert Wright is a well-researched one covering a great deal of territory. It should be read in its entirety to be properly understood. In it he discusses the history of religion with a focus on western Abrahamic faiths, although not entirely neglecting eastern religions. He tells us in the Introduction that he's giving us a human "materialistic" account of it, although he thinks doing so "actually affirms the validity of a religious worldview," though not a traditionalist one, but one nonetheless. Wright argues the gods arose as illusions and that "the subsequent history of the idea of god is...the evolution of an illusion." This evolution points to the existence of a "divinity," he argues, even though this god is not one that most believers currently accept. As it evolved it has "moved closer to plausibility." (p.4). Wright begins with the five types of primitive hunter-gatherer supernatural beings: elemental spirits, puppeteers, organic spirits, ancestral spirits, and the high gods. These primitive gods were not always worshipped but treated as we would treat other human beings. In these societies the Shaman was the "first step toward an archbishop or ayatollah" who had contact with these otherwise hidden forces and could help focus their powers to heal, protect, and provide. As small tribes grew into larger societies the chiefdom was the next evolutionary stage where there was a need for a "structural reliance on the supernatural." Chiefs in these agricultural societies were conduits through which divine power entered the social scale down to the lesser folk. If things went well for a society then the chief was doing a good job. Superstition reigned in these days. With the arrival of the city-states, kings needed divine legitimization and used the gods to solidify their rule over the people. The king was now the conduit of divine power. The character of the gods could differ between city-states, but many of them demanded human sacrifices or else there was chaos. Along with this development came moral obligations, which if they were not met caused sickness and death. In these city-states there was competition between rival cities and along with them rival gods. This had a tendency for these polytheistic people to elevate their god above others, which was a step toward monotheism. When Wright turns to a discussion of the emergence of Abrahamic monotheism it appears to me he is at his very best. In decoding the biblical texts from how we normally read them beginning with Genesis, he finds good evidence that behind what we see on the surface is a different story of Yahweh who was just one god in a pantheon of early gods. Yahweh starts out with a body, for instance, and was given the people of Israel to rule over by Elyon, the highest god in the pantheon. Originally Yahweh was probably one of the Canaanite deities, he argues. When it comes to the Israelites themselves, Wright argues from archeological evid