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The Evolution of God

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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 evidence that they look more and more like Canaanites who originally worshipped Baal and Asherah, rather than some people who invaded Palestine after leaving Egypt.

In a fascinating discussion Wright argues that this Hebrew god evolved into a monolatry, which was a "way station on the road to full-fledge monotheism." Monolatry didn't deny the existence of other gods, it just affirmed that Yahweh was the highest of those gods in the pantheon. This was achieved mostly by King Josiah, who sought to solidify his reign and centralize worship in Jerusalem. Josiah even had his reforms written in much of the book of Deuteronomy.

When Judah was carried away into captivity by the Babylonians the exiled Jewish theologians made the most of their disaster. Based on good reasoning and scholarship Wright shows how they thought about such a complete and utter disaster and why they came to the conclusion that Yahweh was the one and only God. If it was Yahweh's will to bring the mightiest empire of their day to so utterly destroy them for their sins, as they did, then Yahweh was bigger than they had ever thought. "A god who governs the actions of the greatest known empire is a god who can govern history itself." (p. 171).

But this God of theirs was not yet thought of as a good God. That was the next evolutionary stage to take place, and Wright sees this coming from the writings of Philo of Alexandria, who urged a tolerance for other gods at about the same time Jesus was preaching.

But even Jesus did not think of his God as a loving God, Wright argues. In Mark's first gospel Jesus is portrayed as one who "believes you should love your neighbors, but that isn't to be confused with loving all humankind. He believes you should love God, but there's no mention of God loving you." (p. 258).

The Apostle Paul, however, is described by Wright as the "apostle of love," not only because he penned I Corinthians 13, known as the "Chapter of Love," but also from other things he wrote. It was Paul's version of Christianity that eventually won the day in Constantine's multiethnic empire because it favored ethnic harmony, Wright argues.

Wright sees the same evolutionary trend in Islam. First Allah "transcended tribal distinctions," as Yahweh did before him. Then he acquired the "multinational perspective of an empire," even to the point when in places the Koran grants the possibility of salvation to people "outside the fold." (p. 436)

Wright concludes that in our day "we've reached a stage in history where the movement toward moral truth has to become globally momentous." In short, God has some "some growing to do," (p. 436), and Wright seems confident this will happen, given what he wrote in his previous book, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny. Whether he can be this optimistic depends on the case he made there.

In the end, traditionalists will not like this book, and he admits this. Wright's god seems to be an abstract god as "the source of the moral order" (p. 446), and in such a belief he finds his god, although he holds out hope this god is also a personal one.

Other thinkers have argued God will become unnecessary and will evolve out of existence in the human mind, but whether or not that will happen is yet to be seen. In any case this is a judicious treatment that will surely provoke controversy. It's also enlightening. Hopefully his book will contribute to the ongoing evolution of the idea of God. And maybe it'll contribute to his evolution out of existence, too.

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I'm the author of "Why I Became an Atheist," and the edited book, "The Christian Delusion."

The Evolution of God
In 2000 Robert Wright published Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny to some acclaim. In it he argued that there is a favorable direction to human history attributable to increasing opportunities for non-zero-sum interaction where both parties gain something, versus zero-sum situations where one party may gain, but only at the expense of the other. Social structures grow to take advantage of these situations, he contended, and build incrementally toward supranational governance. He concluded that "...it is hard, after pondering the full sweep of history, to resist the conclusion that -- in some important ways, at least -- the world now stands at its moral zenith to date."

Now comes The Evolution of God, where Wright further elaborates his contention that moral progress is ingrained in the course of history. In it Wright offers a materialist analysis of changing portrayals of gods and God, sure to aggravate conventional believers of many faiths. But he also asserts that history shows there might be something like a God force behind moral improvement, a position that many religious skeptics are likely to reject.

Wright's thesis entails three basic propositions. The first is that God evolves. By this Wright means not an actual God, whom he generally treats as illusory, but rather peoples' conceptions of gods and God. The "evolution" he writes about is mostly cultural evolution, although he includes an appendix on the possible biological roots of religion.

The bulk of the book is devoted to his tracing the history of gods from hunter-gatherer societies through chiefdoms, polytheistic kingdoms, the evolution of monolatry and monotheism, and then the scriptural presentation of God in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Wright is interested mainly in how gods may have felt about cultural outsiders, about "others" not part of one's own group. He emphasizes how gods have alternated between coaxing their followers to destroy designated others and urging accommodation and acceptance of people with different beliefs.

Wright proposes that whether gods were seen as belligerent toward out-groups or not often depended on the political needs of societal leaders at the time. When leaders perceived zero-sum conflict situations in relations with other groups it was useful to have one's own gods offer some encouragement to rally the troops. But if there were non-zero-sum opportunities in possible alliances, say through trade or military coalitions, then it became useful to be more ecumenical, to accept to some degree others' gods as well as one's own. For instance, one way of accommodating polytheistic gods when political coalitions were built was to make them into a clan of gods, related to each other.

His historical analysis of the cultural evolution is not as strong as it could be, not least because he leaves out a big chunk of time. While he relies on relatively modern evidence from hunter-gatherer and chiefdom societies, draws on certain contemporary events, and offers limited comments on the intervening centuries, he focuses mostly on the developmental period preceding about 700 AD. After Constantine, for instance, we hear very little of how the evolution of God may have played out in Christianity through the administration of churches and states.

Wright's second basic proposition is that there is a moral trajectory in history, expanding opportunities to realize the good. "The march of history challenges people to expand their range of sympathy and understanding, to enlarge their moral imaginations, to share the perspective of people ever farther away," he claims. He concedes that it is not inevitable that we will get closer to moral truth, but he believes that growing non-zero-sumness is forcing us to face up to it or to otherwise descend into chaos.

He allows that there has not been simple linear progress, but contends that there has been an advance through fits and starts, some forward, some backward. Yet since again he barely skims the past 1300 years, his assertion that history demonstrates moral progress remains highly questionable, unproven at best.

Wright's third basic proposition relies on the first two. He says that if there is a moral order (Proposition #2) and if conceptions of God have evolved to support it (Proposition #1), it does not necessarily mean there is a God; but, he asserts, these conditions are evidence in favor of the God hypothesis (Proposition #3).

Even if gods arose from illusions, he suggests, the evolution of the illusions "points to the existence of something you can meaningfully call divinity." He is not arguing the God hypothesis is true -- he is merely offering it up for consideration as plausible.

Wright's reasoning is dubious. From his questionable assertion that there has been moral progress it is a big leap to claim, as he does, that it reflects a purposeful historical goal. Patterns do not necessarily imply purposes. And only after he has smuggled in the idea of purposeful history is it possible for him to speak of a source of the purpose. A "purpose" by its very nature has an agent, some sentient entity capable of intent, at least in our common understanding. Where we see purposes we see agents, just as Wright does here. There are further flaws in his logic, including reliance on a false analogy between propositions about God as the source of moral order and physicists' postulation of electrons to help explain the behavior of matter.

So Wright's conclusion that the evolution of the concept of God and moral progress in history constitute evidence for the God hypothesis is unconvincing. Nevertheless, The Evolution of God is likely to sell well, and perhaps it should. Certainly the title and subject matter are fashionable, in both their evolution and God dimensions. Wright deserves credit for the ambition of this work, for its sweep and boldness. The Evolution of God will make readers think, if only to marshal their responses to the parts where they believe Wright is wrong.

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 contribution in these books. And in particular I find his vision of moral progress to be inspiring. We can all hope that the forces of globalization in today's world might promote peace, as we expand our circle of moral concern to finally cover the planet.

This book could, and should, have one of two alternative titles.

It's either "Nonzero: The Religion Primer" or "The Evolution of Western Religious Thought."

Why would either one of those be better?

First, what I recommend instead of this book. People looking for good scholarly insight into the evolution of human religious thought, from a well-grounded (and not overblown) evolutionary psychology perspective, should head to Scott Atran's "In Gods We Trust." He covers the ground on evolution of human thought in greater depth than does Wright.

On the first alternative title, in my opinion, Wright is a one-trick pony. He attempts to apply the idea of non-zero-sum game theory, as articulated in Nonzero, to every book he writes. First, it's debatable whether game theory at all, whether non-zero-sum or zero-sum, is even applicable to religion.

Second, even if it is applicable to some aspects of, say, psychology of religion, psychology of religion is NOT the same as religion from an evolutionary psychology perspective.

Third, behavioral psychology undercuts the alleged rationality of much human behavior upon which game theory is based.

Fourth, Wright once claims "interdependence" equals "non-zero-sumness." Not necessarily, first of all, and secondly, he offers no proof for that.

The second alternative title?

This book is about the evolution of the three Western monotheisms. Because they are monotheisms, and emerged either from a polytheistic milieu (Islam) or from an earlier polytheistic stage (Judaism, and hence Christianity), the evolution of god within these religions is part and parcel of the evolution of the religion.

But, Wright never touches polytheistic Hinduism, still vibrant today, except for an offhand aside or two. Ditto on either the atheistic or nonatheistic sides of Buddhism.

So, in a more serious way than my comments on him as a one-trick pony, the book simply doesn't live up to its title.

Beyond what I said above, there's a couple of other issues. More below the jump link.

Wright says:

**However, after the (Israelite exile to Babylon), monotheism evolves into something much more laudable and inclusive. Now the exiles have returned to Jerusalem and Israel is in a secure neighborhood. It's part of the Persian empire and so are its neighbors. So you see a much sunnier side of God, with expressions of tolerance and compassion toward other nations. **

Really? So that was Ezra, servant of the "sunnier side of God," telling Jews to, tolerantly and compassionately, divorce their non-Jewish wives? And, let's not forget the split in the middle of the Maccabean war against those who just wanted religious freedom and those who wanted a nation, and internecine fighting.

That, in turn, relates to a larger issue.

Wright appears to see "progress" as part and parcel of evolution, whether neo-Darwinian biological evolution, or the evolution of religion/god. He even goes so far as to accept Dan Dennett's claim (tremendously overstates, wholly unsubstantiated as of this time) that evolution is algorithmic. I suggest some Steve Gould and the word "contingency" for both Wright and Dennett.

This is clear in the biblical record, namely the revolt of the Maccabees? What if they don't get lucky in their early battles against the Seleucids? Then NONE of the three western monotheisms is likely to exist today.

However, Wright makes comments about the inevitability of religious progress on 201 and the moral growth of god on 206. Everybody in Sheol, or people who can't accept twaddle in eternal hellfire? That's "moral growth"? I think not. Of course, that's another unproven claim from the one-trick pony of non-zero-sumness, first claimed in Nonzero.

The capper? He's a materialist who won't rule out a "higher purpose."

I was originally going to two-star this book. It doesn't deserve that.

I especially do not get AT ALL why many secularists fawn over this book in particular or Wright in general.

If you want a serious read on the evolution of the religious mindset among Homo sapiens, incorporating evolutionary psychology in a better and more in-depth way than does Wright, read Scott Atran's "In Gods We Trust." Not this.

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, which itself is a non-linear process, but albeit more slowly changing due to heretofore relatively slow environmental change. The evolution of complex creatures (such as humans), ecosystems and cultures depends crucially on there being slowly changing environmental conditions. It is not clear that moral development will continue in the face of abrupt changes to the biological and cultural environment that we are likely to face.

Nevertheless, "The Evolution of God" is a thought provoking work that also serves as a sort of bridge between traditional religion based moral and the new atheism, and as such it serves a very valuable function in advancing our understanding of our moral development. I enjoyed the book very much and recommend it highly.

Robert Wright, in his latest book The Evolution of God, promises up front that he will make a plausible case for the existence of some force or intention behind the universe that could be called "divinity," and does so in the midst of making a different case altogether: that our notions of the illusory "one true god" (and Wright does call the idea of God an "illusion") adapt over time to the circumstances of the people believing in him.

On the second argument, he succeeds brilliantly. Not so much in that this is a revelation (is it a surprise to anyone that religious notions change to fit the times and situations of the humans inventing them?), but in the fluid, accessible, and vivid way in which he makes his case and educates the reader. 90 percent or so of The Evolution of God is utterly engrossing and fascinating in this way.

On the first argument, however, he fails, and it leaves one utterly puzzled. He writes:

"Maybe, in the end, a mercilessly scientific account of our predicament--such as the account that got me denounced from the pulpit of my mother's church--is actually compatible with a truly religious worldview, and is part of the process that refines a religious worldview, moving it closer to truth."

It's a valiant effort he makes, but not a coherent one.

Wright has a brilliant way of weaving together elements of history and constructing a guiding principle or theory to explain its dynamics. He did so in Nonzero in regards to human interactions over time. Whether or not one thinks Wright reaches cogent conclusions in either book, it is hard to deny that he has taken his subject terribly seriously and constructed plausible and thought-provoking narratives in following history's thread.

I don't claim the religious or historical scholarship to be able to weigh his reconstruction of religious history for thoroughness or veracity, but I can say that at the very least he lends a fresh perspective to the evolution of religion that, if nothing else, is brought to life by his wit and passion for the subject. (Certainly worth further exploration is his comparison of financial analysts to shamans, people who show no evidence of genuine connection to an incomprehensible phenomenon -- be it the stock market or the spirit world -- and yet we imbue them with a kind of priestliness, assuming they possess knowledge that they likely do not.)

At the center of Wright's examination of the evolution of religion is what he sees as religion's expanding moral circle -- as time goes on, religions and notions of God begin to accept a greater and greater share of the human species into the sphere of those we deem worthy of moral consideration. (He is careful to note, wisely I think, that gods were not originally conceived as moral arbiters at all, but merely as explanations for natural events and good and bad fortune.) There are fits and starts to be sure, big ones, and Wright does not hide them, but he posits that the overall trend is one of expanding and deepening tolerance.
That this occurs is difficult to argue with, but it immediately seems odd to lend this characterization to religion in particular, rather than seeing religion's evolution as a byproduct of the wider culture's evolution. Yes, the interpretations and dictates of various religious philosophies may be growing more tolerant and humanistic, but Wright fails to prove that this moral expansion is a product of the religion itself, and not vice versa (and truly, it is not always clear in what direction he wishes us to go). Does it not make more sense to say that as society becomes more diverse and sophisticated, and as disparate cultures are intermingling for the first time, that the accompanying religions are simply being adapted to that end? The religions aren't making us more moral, our increasing and deepening sense of morality is being reflected in our religions (and Wright does not rule that out, either). One may reinforce the other, of course, and Wright doesn't outright declare that religion's moral growth is the only reason we don't slaughter each other in the streets today (oh wait), but whatever his ultimate point, religion deserves less credit for our tolerance than Wright implicitly gives it.

This is all to say that Wright constructs a case through his narrative that religion changes with the times, and illustrates what forms it takes, but then seems to see this evolution as an innate property of religion; a guided human phenomenon that grows in moral scope over time ("there is a moral order out there--and it's imposed on us."). But were he not to proffer that conclusion, one would simply read his book as an excellent explanation of how human morality has changed and improved, independent of religion, and how religion then changes to suit.

But then we come to the maddening 10 percent of the book, in which Wright tries to take his assembled case about the evolution of religion and use it to prove that behind this evolution is some intentional force, some Logos, that is driving the change. The Abrahamic scriptures in particular "reveal the arrow of moral development built into human history." The word "built" being key. Wright tells us again and again that there is some trove of evidence that at least suggests that a power "out there" is pushing human history in a particular direction, but fails to provide it, citing only the adaptations religion (an entirely human-borne phenomenon) has made over the millennia. Our developing and evolving notions of morality are not, to Wright, byproducts of increased human and societal sophistication, they are proof of something not unlike God. "The fact that there's a moral order out there doesn't mean there's a God. On the other hand, it's evidence in favor of the God hypothesis . . ."

But wait. Wright insists he is not stretching logic in his arguments, calling them "materialist" and that "no mystical force . . . has to enter the system to explain this, and there's no need to look for one." No need for one, but he puts it there anyway, which is unfortunate. In a response to Jerry Coyne's review of his book (which I think is quite a bit too harsh on Wright), he reminds us:

"I don't argue that religious belief is a pre-requisite for this moral progress; atheists are presumably just as responsive to the underlying dynamic as believers. The values system in question--religious or secular--is a kind of "neutral medium" through which underlying social dynamics find their moral manifestation."

This is true, and Wright's critics often unfairly attack him for supposedly trying to imply that we should all start believing in the unprovable in order to join in with Wright's "moral axis." But if anything, Wright sees any underlying divinity to the universe as, well, universal, and more importantly, unavoidable. Atheists would not be able to resist the moral arc of history even if we wanted to (and I, for one, wouldn't, if it existed, which it doesn't).

Perhaps most intellectually offensive is Wright's comparison of people's belief in a cosmic superbeing with scientists' understanding of electrons. Electrons can't be "seen" in the usual sense, but we see evidence of their existence in other ways. So it is with divinity, says Wright. We can't look at God in the face, but one can say that we see evidence of his/its presence.
Only we don't. Or if we do, Wright hasn't come close to proving it. Electrons, on the other hand, are known to exist through decades of rigorous study and experimentation by thousands upon thousands of scientists in all fields of study. The "divine" is a foggy notion that doesn't have much of a definition, the evidence for which being, at best, extremely suspect, subjective, and remote.

And another important distinction: Were the scientific community to discover it was wrong all along about electrons, so be it. Science would accept its new understanding and go from there. Those who are told that there is no proof for a cosmic consciousness are rarely so open to disproof. I suspect the same is true for Wright, who has glommed onto his idea of a mystical force behind the universe without any kind of reasonable foundation. It's a shame, because it taints what is on the whole a wonderful book. Had he kept his exploration to the "facts on the ground," and wholly derived his conclusions from those foundations, The Evolution of God would be an unabashed triumph.

But, oh, that 10 percent. Get a hold of the book, read it, feast on it, enjoy it, and then get ready to be taken a bit off the rails. Though his quasi-deism is disappointing, the book is still very much worth the ride.

*** for more from this reviewer, see my column at Examiner.com - [...] ***

As a Minister, I have found this work to highly intelligent yet, totally readable without any academic posturing. Anyone who is a serious student of spirituality should read this book. It is important that we investigate our history in order to separate facts from fable. All of our great Religious tomes had wonderful sources of spiritual information in them but we must avoid the traps of literalism. This work helps us to see the historical roots in the development of religions and by understanding the human influences we can come to understand that Spirituality IS constantly EVOLVING and thus is a work in progress that requires continual thought and questioning rather than blind faith. Thank you Robert Wright for being a voice of reason in a Dark age.

The Evolution of God by Robert Wright

The Evolution of God by Robert Wright is a book about the evolution of the concept of God. The author makes use of archaeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology to explain how mainly the Abrahamic religions evolved. The book 576 pages worth is composed of twenty chapters within five major sections: I. The Birth and Growth of the Gods, II. The Emergence of Abrahamic Monotheism, III. The Invention of Christianity, IV. The Triumph of Islam, and V. God Goes Global (Or Doesn't).

Positives:
1. A very-well researched book.
2. The whole is better than its parts. In order to appreciate its true worth it must be read in its entirety.
3. It rewards the reader with a lot of knowledge. I finally feel I have a much better grasp on how the three Abrahamic religions evolved. The author doesn't cheat the reader either, there is plenty of solid supporting data to back his viewpoints.
4. Very respectful tone throughout. The author is very careful in being fair.
5. Where would we be without Darwin? Great use of Darwin's theory of evolution to explain the evolution itself of the concept of God.
6. Interesting tidbits throughout. Fascinating how polytheism streamlined into monotheism.
7. The author does a wonderful job of illustrating patterns in religious beliefs.
8. Religion is a fascinating topic. The author does a very good job of using scientific tools to explain the evolution of the concept of God.
9. Interesting how religious tolerance is embraced when the possibility of mutual gain exists. Many such concepts are well explained in this book.
10. Explains how the success of the three Abrahamic religions can be attributed to specific people.
11. Politicians and how they use religion to their advantage...
12. Overall great religious history from hunter-gatherer societies to now.
13. The author contends that there is also an evolution of morality. Moral progress.
14. Fascinating take of the afterlife.
15. This book is a must for those who want to understand the evolution of religion.

Negatives:
1. The overblown use of non-zero sum theory. It does a disservice to the reader to have to research this overused concept because it was never properly defined.
2. The book was tedious at times to read. I felt that the author took the scenic route too many times. In doing so, I felt that the book was probably 200 pages too long.
3. I agreed with a lot of his points but at times I felt he lacked conviction.
4. Near the end of the book the author baffles me with his very poor electron analogy.
5. Needed a summary chart or tables to break up the monotony.
6. Lacked great quotes or memorable phrases.
7. No use of summaries.


In summary, The Evolution of God by Robert Wright was a very difficult book for me to evaluate. The whole is better than its parts. There is a lot of good work here but the author many times belabors his points. I will reluctantly give the book four stars because of how well researched it is and ultimately it does reward the reader with very good information. However, the author ends the book with an electron analogy that baffles the mind. I can only recommend this book to those who really want to get well-researched information regarding the evolution of the concept of God. It's not a fun read but it may be a worthwhile one, you need to be the judge of that.

In "The Evolution of God", Mr. Wright has thrown in his scholarly two cents on how Judaism, Christianity and Islam (the Abrahamic religions) truly evolved, and much of what he posits is against conventional religious beliefs.

The book of Joshua states that Israelites emigrated to the promised land from the desert and conquered the natives. Archaeological evidence suggests otherwise. Israelites did not enter Canaan. They were Canaanites, and rose from among the native population of the promised land as polytheists (belief in existence of multiple Gods) until after the Babylonian exile.

In comparing the three Abrahamic religions and their practitioners' propensity to commit violent acts, no one takes the cake. All three have a history rife with wild swings from "brotherly love" to vengeance. Such tendencies were directed by conditions on the ground. When the Muslim prophet Mohammad began assembling followers in Mecca, he had little to no capacity to fight. The Koranic suras at the time, were therefore, pacifist in tone. When it came time to put the pedal to the metal, the rhetoric in the Koran transformed to a belligerent one.

In the chapter "Well, aren't we special?", Mr. Wright expresses the fashionable apocalyptic view shared by Sam Harris in the The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, whereby unless something significant changes about the religious worldview, we are doomed to pay the price of its colossal failure. "And hence the current, culminating moment in that pattern, a moment when the only way to avoid great and possibly catastrophic harm is to expand that moral circle across the whole planet." (p. 433 of hardcopy). Mr. Wright, unlike Mr. Harris is optimistic about our chances of inter-religious reconciliation. The pattern from the birth of religion to today has been one of moral evolution, and that trend will continue to the point where this reconciliation will encompass science as well.

Until that moment of singularity, we may be better off ignoring the scholarly arguments for and against our religious beliefs or lack thereof, because any attempt at enlightenment can leave us in a state of "high frequency vacillation".

The most glaring inadequacy in Mr. Wright's arguments is perhaps failing to account for the idea that societies across the planet may become more secular over time, as has been the case in much of Europe, and that social salvation can be achieved without the need for the reconciliation between religion and science, or inter-religious acceptance.

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 tolerant or intolerant is not correct. There is room in all scriptures for tolerance when the believers see themselves in non-zero sum situations with their neighbors. There is also room for intolerance when believers see others as a threat to their livelihoods and beliefs. He gives the example of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. In his mind, the "New Atheists", who point to this as an example of why religion is bad, are mistaken. Instead the root causes are highly non-religious, having much more to do with zero sum claims to land and historical grievances.

He ends the book on an optimistic note, asserting that the direction in history clearly points to the development of a peaceful global civilization, and concurrently, a more universalistic theology. In fact, he states that given the pace of technological advancement, this is the only choice if we are to avoid catastrophe.
In the conclusion he writes,

"At the core of each faith is the conviction that there is a moral order, and for the Abrahamic conception of God to grow in this fashion (universalism) would be yet more evidence that such an order exists. For Jews, Christians, or Muslims to cling to claims of special validity could make their faiths seem, and perhaps be, less valid...
Is it crazy to imagine a day when the Abrahamic faiths renounce not only their specific claims to specialness, but even the claim to specialness of the whole Abrahamic enterprise? Are such radical changes in God's character imaginable? Changes this radical have already happened, again and again. Another transformation would be nothing new"

Surprisingly, he also affirms the validity of personal conceptions of God as proxies for an abstract conception of higher purpose. In the afterword he goes into the implications of his narrative for belief in God. Instead of trying to summarize it, I will quote it at length.

"Given the constraints of human nature, believers in God are interacting with the moral order as productively as possible by conceiving its source in a particular way, however imperfect that way is. Isn't that kind of like physicists who interact with the physical order as productively as possible by conceiving of its subatomic sources in a particular way, however imperfect that way is...

Maybe the most defensible view-of electrons and of God-is to place them somewhere between illusion and imperfect conception. Yes, there is a source of the patterns we attribute to the electron, and the electron as conceived is a useful enough proxy for that source that we shouldn't denigrate it by calling it an "illusion; still, our image of an electron is very, very different from what this source would look like were the human cognitive apparatus capable of apprehending it adroitly. So too with God; yes, there is a source of the moral order, and many people have a conception of God that is a useful proxy for that source; still that conception is very, very different from what the source of the moral order would look like were human cognition able to grasp it...

So you might say that the evolution of the human moral equipment by natural selection was the Logos at work during a particular phase of organic aggregation; it was what allowed our distant ancestors to work together in small groups, and it set the stage for them to work together in much larger groups, including, eventually, transcontinental ones.
If you accept this argument-if you buy into this particular theology of the Logos-then feeling the presence of a personal god has a kind of ironic validity. On the one hand, you're imagining things; the divine being you sense "out there" is actually something inside you. On the other hand, this something inside you is an expression of forces "out there"; it's an incarnation of a non-zero-sum logic that predates and transcends individual people, a kind of logic that-in this theology of the Logos, at least-can be called divine. The feeling of contact with a transcendent divinity is in that sense solid."

As a Baha'i, this book is especially interesting for two reasons. First, Wright's understanding of the progressive evolution of God is very similar to a Baha'i understanding of "progressive revelation". Both would agree that religion changes based on the cultural and scientific capacity of people, and that the destiny of religion today is to be universalistic in nature. A difference would appear to be the emphasis on "revelation" that Baha'is place on religious evolution. For Baha'is, we live in a cycle of "revelation", in which God reveals new teachings through a "manifestation" of God. When this happens a new energy is manifest in the universe, and new capacity for spiritual and scientific development is made possible. While this would seem to contradict Wright's materialistic explanations of religious evolution, a more subtle understanding of "revelation" might seem to bridge the gap. Wright dedicates a whole section of his book to the thinking of Philo of Alexandria. Philo was a Jewish philosopher in the time of Christ who, according to Erwin Goodenough, "read Plato in terms of Moses, and Moses in terms of Plato, to the point that he was convinced that each had essentially the same things."Philo endeavored to bridge the gap between Judaism and Greek philosophy by developing the concept of the Logos. Wright uses Philo's approach to bridge the gap between "revelation" and a scientific account of human evolution in his own mind.

"The Logos...had in Philo's view given history a direction-in fact, a moral direction: a history moved toward the good. a Logos-driven history would eventually unify humankind in political freedom; the Logos would work 'to end that the whole of our world should be as a single state, enjoying the best of constitutions, a democracy.' At the same time, Philo believed the Logos had existed before humans or the earth or, for that matter, matter. Prior to creating the universe, God formulated the Logos the way and architect might conceive of a blueprint....First God conceived the Logos in his mind. Then, upon creating the world, he, in a sense, uttered the Logos, infusing matter with it. He spoke to the universe at its beginning, and, via the ongoing guidance of Logos, he speaks to us now...The Logos is humankind's point of contact with the divine. This is how the Logos reconciles the transcendence of God with a divine presence in the world. God himself is beyond the material universe...Yet...the algorithm...is an extension of a designer, a reflection of the designers mind...The job of human beings, you might say, is to in turn cooperate with the divinity. The Logos, he said, was reflected in the Torah, the Jewish law...it didn't just tell you how to behave in order to harmonize yourself with the principle that governs the universe...the rules of living laid out in the Torah were part of the Logos."

So if "revelation" is seen as a manifestation of a Logos, a design manifesting itself in the world through the process of biological and cultural evolution, then Wrights concept of progressive evolution is compatible with the Baha'i view of "progressive revelation".

The second reason this is so interesting to me is that it comes from the point of view of a skeptical materialist. Wright's background is writing about evolutionary psychology, yet he comes to almost the same theology as the Baha'i Faith. Baha'is believe in the harmony of science and religion, and often it is easy for us to claim this without fully accounting for the scientific interpretations of spiritual experience, and spiritual evolution. If, like Philo, we can continue to develop a language that fully accounts for the knowledge inherent in both the scientific process and revealed scripture, then we can collectively manifest this principle.