Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion [Paperback]

Barbara J. King (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 16, 2007

This cutting-edge book—with echoes of both Jane Goodall and Joseph Campbell—adds a fascinating new dimension to the debate about the origins of religion.

The study of evolution has uncovered invaluable information about many aspects of human behavior and culture, from the physiology of our bodies and brains to the development of hunting, technology, and social groups. But an understanding of the intangibles of human experience, especially religion, lags far behind. Attempts to discover the source of religiosity through genetic analysis and neuroscience have so far yielded intriguing but incomplete insights. Evolving God represents an exciting breakthrough. Drawing on her own extensive investigations into the behavior of our closest primate relatives and the most up-to-date research in archaeology, anthropology, and biology, Barbara King offers a comprehensive, holistic view of how and why religion came to be.

King focuses on how the Great Apes, our human ancestors, and modern humans relate to one another socially and emotionally, and she traces the growing complexities of communication throughout the course of evolution. She shows that, with increased brain capacity, the scope and nature of socio-emotional ties began with one-to-one relationships and expanded to group relationships (families and communities) and then to connections with long-dead ancestors, animal spirits, and “higher beings.” Her incisive, highly readable narrative takes readers from the earliest common relative of humans and apes (more than 6 million years ago), through the Neandertal period and the Stone Age, to the dawn of religion in early human societies.

Evolving God explores one of the greatest mysteries in human history—the question of whether humankind is innately religious—and provides evidence that will have a tremendous impact on current debates about evolution, creationism, and intelligent design.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this sure-to-be-controversial treatment of the origins of religion, King, an anthropology professor at the College of William and Mary, posits that "an earthly need for belongingness led to the human religious imagination and thus to the other-worldly realm of relating with God, gods, and spirits." For evidence, King draws upon cutting-edge research in primatology to demonstrate that once animals are capable of emotional attachments and cognitive empathy, they are ready for—and even appear to require—certain intangibles like a belief in something greater than themselves. While many theological types are likely to caricature King's arguments as a cool scientific dismissal of religion, her interpretation is actually far more nuanced and subtle than this. It's true that the book requires some enormous argumentative leaps; it's a long stretch from demonstrating that contemporary primates have emotional attachments to claiming that they are then capable of creating religions, as King maintains human beings once did. But even readers who close the book unconvinced will be impressed by King's fresh insights and her lucid writing, which is a jargon-free, story-filled model for all academics who wish to write for a general audience.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Biological anthropologist King contends that religion, conceived as a system not of beliefs but of actions, not as theology but as worship, is a consequence of primate evolution. It proceeds, she posits, from the sense of group membership that highly developed mammals, especially the great apes, demonstrate in many ways but most saliently for religion when they show concern for a group member that has died. Signs of such concern appear in the fossil record of human ancestors first at burial sites. Certain arrangements of the bodies of the dead, funerary articles, and choices of particular colors and designs indicate an expanding consciousness of the universe-in-time and speculation about creatures' places within it. Even before the famous cave paintings of early Homo sapiens, which increasingly are seen to express religious feeling, large Neanderthal ceremonial sites indicate worshipful attitudes--indicate, King insists, the emotions of religion. In conclusion, she weighs the popular debate over evolution, noting high skepticism about human evolution and high belief in God, and questions the compulsion to choose either evolution or belief. Anyone who recognizes that compulsion, internal or external, may profit from reading this brilliant book. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday Religion; 1 edition (January 16, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385511043
• ISBN-13: 978-0385511049
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #518,135 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm a wife, mom, animal lover, cat rescuer, ape-watcher, anthropologist, avid reader of novels and non-fiction, and of course writer! I love my work and how close it brings me to other species, ranging from gorillas and baboons to cats and turtles.

In recent years I've brought together my love of animals and my love of anthropology in writing books about what it means to be human. My recent book BEING WITH ANIMALS tells stories of emotions and behaviors expressed by apes, monkeys, elephants, whales, cats, and dogs to explore why we humans so readily care so deeply for other creatures. It spans the art caves of ancient France, the past-and-present reindeer cultures of Siberia, and our own present-day love of pets.

At home, my husband Charlie, daughter Sarah (see photo where she is pictured with me!) and I care for a large number of homeless/abandoned cats: 7 in the house, 11 in a spacious pen in our yard, 2 strays that hang around with us, and 7 at a nearby colony. The joy we get from interacting with animals at home, in national parks throughout the US, and indeed anywhere we travel is a huge part of our lives.

Please visit my website http://www.barbarajking.com to listen to some of my radio interviews or to read back entries in my FRIDAY ANIMAL BLOG (new ones will be available each week at the blog link here on Amazon). I'd also love to hear your own animal stories through the contact page there.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A thoughtful view of the origins of religion, January 28, 2007

By 

Sherman E. Wilcox (Albuquerque, NM USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion (Paperback)

The front cover of Barbara King's "Evolving God" proclaims that this is a "provocative view on the origins of religion." Perhaps, but this is not a deliberately provocative book. "Evolving God" is a gentle, respectful, and above all thoughtful book that searches for the origins of the religious impulse. King finds this in what she calls belongingness, "mattering to someone who matters to you," a trait found in contemporary humans but also in our human and non-human primate ancestors.

King's is a scientific and evolutionary account of the origins of religion, but one that is more nuanced and ultimately more satisfying than either the current trend of 'gene-based' accounts, or of those like Dawkins, who insists that science must necessarily lead us to regard religion with scorn -- a highly unscientific view, if we are ever to understand the undeniable fact that humans are deeply spiritual creatures.

Rather than pitting science against religion, King deftly uses the knowledge that science uncovers to reveal the evolution of the religious imagination. "Evolving God" should be read by all who seek to understand how and why humans came to have such an abiding interest in the spiritual, whether it is expressed through participation in organized religion or a profound sense of awe in the mystery of life. Highly recommended!

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Belongingness" - there's meaning-making in it, March 16, 2008

By 

Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion (Paperback)

Barbara King makes a valiant effort to bring religion within the framework of human evolution. She's not the first to attempt this, but her primate research has placed her in an enviable position to achieve more than previous efforts. Her thesis rests on our similarity with most other primate species. We are a social creature, with outlook and behaviour depending on our relationships with our immediate fellows. Apes, she notes, express deep empathy, they mourn lost family members, just as we do. Apes interact in subtle ways, from eye contact, expressions and postures. "Body language" in many cases substitutes for the verbal skills we enjoy. Assessing these traits in a scientific manner permits us, she argues, to also assess that most bizarre of human behaviours - the religious one.

Religion, King asserts, is deeply rooted in what she terms "meaning-making". In a social species with good community identity, this creates "belongingness", a rather cumbersome term spanning self and group awareness, empathy, and a sense of common goals and values. Even the other apes, she argues, display similar characteristics. Gorillas, chimpanzees and, to a very limited extent even monkeys develop a sense of this belongingness. "Meaning-making" derives from "belongingness" by adding human forms of expression to what we inherited from our ape ancestors. Rightly inferring that modern ape behaviours have deep roots, perhaps as far back as our last common ancestor, King examines the paths humans took in their migrations and the behaviours they might have carried with them.

The best part of the book follows with fine depictions of the origins and wanderings of our ancestors over the globe. Examples of early hominin fossils are located and explained well, although few of the palaeontologists are mentioned. Starting with the emergence of primates 70 million years ago, she explains their distinctions from other mammals: grasping hand, binocular vision, large brains and a long duration given to upbringing. Each is further elucidated by their social implications. Grasping hands, for example, allowed infants to tightly bond with the mother who carried them about while foraging. All these features became "greater than the sum of their parts" as these creatures moved over the land. Most important, King insists on recognising that development was continuous - there is no "missing link" when a particular species, bearing unique traits replaced any other. Many varieties lived concurrently, but all likely exhibited aspects of those behaviour patterns we see in the apes. Not until symbolism, seen in various hominin species, including the Neanderthal, emerged in the form of burial artefacts, does a truly new feature appear. Related to those grave goods must be the notion of an "afterlife", she contends.

The issue of "evolving god", implied by the title, actually receives short shrift in King's account. Part of the reason for the lack, of course, is the paucity of information. Gods, tenuous at best, leave neither fossil artefacts - until humans began making images of them - nor expressions of changes in human behaviour. The one point at which this omission might have been more closely addressed, the cave paintings in Western Europe, are described with awe by King, then misinterpreted entirely. She attributes the painting to hunting ritual, a proposal long ago dismissed. Although she introduces David Lewis-Williams, she omits entirely his analysis of the paintings. Right or wrong, Lewis-Williams' idea would have contributed much to her theme of evolving human ideas of gods. She repeats the error in her dealings with "shamanism", a badly conceived term at best. The practices of shamans in "meaning-making" in a community might have enhanced her presentation, but as a primatologist, she apparently has no familiarity with such human activities. Why the author would ignore so much that might have contributed to her concept remains an enigma.

Worst of all is King's fixation with Dean Hamer's recent book, "The God Gene". King is obsessed with demolishing any genetic foundation for the human generation of "God, gods and spirits" - a phrase she repeats so often the reader is soon prepared to rip it from the pages. Hamer, who is taken seriously by nobody but himself and the media, has been refuted by better commentators than King. Yet, he asked many of the right questions, and if King truly seeks an evolutionary foundation for the human idea of gods, she might have entertained his notions more willingly. In deference to her US readers, King further launches an assault on such figures as Richard Dawkins and Daniel C. Dennett. She denounces them both as "out-right hostile" to religion. However valid that may be, it's irrelevant to her concept of gods being the product of evolutionary forces. Although she bemoans the prevalence of "belief" among her fellow countrymen, she has failed to demonstrate that gods are a mental contrivance for social purposes. Until that situation is fully addressed, which King fails miserably to do, the situation in her nation will only worsen. King starts her book well, keeping her speculations under control and balanced with good information. She would have done better, however, to focus more on the supportive data instead of going off on irrelevant tangents. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Evoiving God offers a place to stand, June 29, 2007

By 

John L. Dodson "John L. Dodson" (Santa Cruz Moutains, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion (Paperback)

On reading Evolving God I was filled with a great sense of enthusiasm and hope. Here is an author and a scientist who created a work that ordinary people can get their head around and understand. It offers a workable solution for those who want to have an intelligent faith stance but don't see it in the Fundamentalism that grips American life. The work brings together a way of considering the commonality that all religion shares and offers a clear basis for uniting instead of dividing communions. Here we have a clear and compelling call for the consideration of the real purpose and meaning of religion in the present time. This is a powerful statement of hope in a time filled with doom sayers and purveyors of dispair. By sharing her insights though her observations of animals over an extensive period of study Barbara King shows us how behavior makes all the difference. Religion is not about memorizing religious truth or doctrine but rather is about specific deeds of compassion, acts which demonstrate our belongingness and developing an ethic of respect for all life. This is a readable and thoughtful book that should be required reading for all those who want to become religious leaders. It needs to have wide spread exposure to Roman Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Buddist and other major religious movements and their seminaries, institutes, Ashrams, Intellectual Centers of learning. This book will be very helpful over the course of the years ahead to discussions between religious leaders. It is one you won't want to pass up.